The provincial governor's office informed AFP on Friday that 33 persons had died in Ankara following bootleg alcohol use and another 20 are in intensive care.
In Turkey, where bootleg alcohol is frequently contaminated with methanol, a poisonous chemical that can cause blindness, liver damage and death, such poisonings are rather prevalent and result from covert manufacturing.
Ankara governor Vasip Sahin told reporters on Friday that police had confiscated 102 tonnes of contaminated alcohol and arrested 13 individuals on suspicions of selling it.
Though the governor omitted a chronology, his office's X account on Tuesday cited a "an increase in counterfeit alcohol deaths in recent days".
A spokeswoman for the governor's office informed AFP the statistic was "from the beginning of the year".
Following consuming fake booze in a wave of cases that by January 17, had left another 26 people in intensive care, 38 people died in Istanbul over four days last month.
Since then, no official comment on whether the number of victims rose or on the state of those in intensive care has been made.
Inquired by AFP for a Friday update, a spokeswoman from the Istanbul governor's office responded: "We are not going to make a statement on that."
Turkey is an ostensibly secular nation, although alcohol tariffs have surged under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Muslim who fervuously opposes drinking.
Purchased from a supermarket, a litre bottle of raki, Turkey's aniseed-flavoured national spirit, currently costs over 1,300 lira ($37.20) in a nation where the minimum salary just recently exceeded $600.
Critics claim such rates are driving moonlight manufacture.
.jpg)
