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Turkey’s campaign against illegal gambling is moving beyond the familiar business of shutting down websites. The government is now building a wider enforcement system aimed at the money, communications infrastructure and organised networks that allow black-market betting operations to keep resurfacing.
That shift was laid out on 12 August at Ankara’s Presidential Complex, where Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz convened senior officials for a review of the government’s Illegal Virtual Betting and Gambling Action Plan. Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek and recently appointed Justice Minister Akın Gürlek were among those involved.
The timing was notable. Even with parliament in its summer recess, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration has used August to intensify a campaign that increasingly treats illicit gambling as something larger than a policing problem.
The government’s assessment now reaches into money laundering, organised crime and the integrity of Turkey’s financial system, while also framing gambling as a social issue involving young people and household welfare. The intention, as Yılmaz presented it, is to get ahead of illegal operators rather than continue reacting to new websites and payment channels after they appear.
Much of the machinery for that approach was put in place last November.
A presidential circular issued on 1 November 2025 established the Action Plan for Combating Illegal Betting, Games of Chance and Gambling in Virtual Environments. Instead of leaving different agencies to pursue their own strands of enforcement, the plan brought the work into a coordinated structure. Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board, MASAK, monitors implementation every two months, while Yılmaz chairs broader coordination reviews at four-month intervals.
The August meeting suggests the government is now trying to make that system considerably more aggressive.
Authorities have expanded their ability to detect and block gambling sites, servers and connected web addresses. But communications used to attract customers are also under scrutiny. Bulk text-message promotions, foreign-linked or anonymous communications, multiple mobile subscriptions and weaknesses in identity checks have all been identified as parts of the infrastructure that needs tightening.
The financial trail may prove more important.
Investigators are increasing scrutiny of bank accounts rented or supplied to other people, illicit payment systems and the methods used to move gambling proceeds. Accounts identified as particularly risky can be restricted or closed. Rather than treating a bettor’s account or an individual website as the end point of an investigation, authorities are being directed toward the payment structures and organised groups behind them.
That is a substantial change in emphasis. Turkey has spent years blocking illegal gambling domains, only to confront a market capable of replacing them quickly.
Government figures illustrate the problem. Between 2006 and the end of 2025, access was blocked to 548,420 websites connected to illegal betting and virtual gambling. Some 84,585 were blocked in 2025 alone.
The sheer number also exposes the limits of domain-by-domain enforcement.
AI enters the hunt
The government’s answer is increasingly technological.
Turkish authorities are preparing an AI-powered Illegal Betting and Gambling Scanning and Detection System designed to find illicit operations as they change domains, servers and other digital infrastructure. The Cyber Security Presidency is expected to have a central role, with artificial intelligence used to accelerate identification of gambling sites and potentially people connected to their use.
For Ankara, speed matters. An illegal operator can shift its online presence or payment route far faster than a conventional administrative process can investigate and disable it. The new system is intended to narrow that gap.
Artificial intelligence is not merely a future proposal. Elements of AI-assisted financial investigation are already appearing in major cases.
A July investigation based in Gaziantep combined MASAK banking records with AI-supported analysis to identify hundreds of suspects linked to more than three million transactions. Authorities put the value of those transactions at roughly TRY84.3 billion, equivalent to about €1.75 billion.
Cases on that scale help explain why the government is concentrating increasingly on transaction networks rather than the visible gambling sites sitting on top of them. A website can disappear overnight. Banking relationships, payment intermediaries and flows of criminal proceeds can offer investigators a much broader map.
The Justice Ministry has also adopted a harder posture.
On 8 August, Gürlek described the campaign against online betting and gambling as entering a new phase alongside government action against narcotics and organised street crime. His message was directed beyond the people running individual betting sites: prosecutors and investigators intend to pursue participants throughout the network, including those occupying lower-level roles.
The warning came only days before Yılmaz’s coordination meeting, giving the August announcements the appearance of a coordinated push across prosecution, finance, cyber enforcement and policing rather than another isolated crackdown.
The government also wants fewer customers
Ankara is not relying entirely on enforcement.
On 9 August, the Presidency’s Directorate of Communications launched the #OyunaGelme campaign, an effort to discourage participation in virtual gambling and illegal betting through videos, graphics and other material distributed online.
Its focus is the sales pitch that sustains the market: easy-money promises, promotions that encourage gamblers to continue after losses and advertising that presents betting as ordinary entertainment. Social-media promotion and celebrity involvement are also part of the campaign’s target.
The message being pushed to consumers is that repeated betting losses are not an accidental side effect of the product but can become part of a cycle that keeps people gambling.
That gives the government’s strategy two fronts. One seeks to reduce demand by changing how gambling is perceived, particularly online. The other is aimed at making illegal operators harder to advertise, finance and run.
For years, the most visible measure of Turkey’s fight against the black market was the number of websites it could block. The figures became enormous, while replacement sites continued to emerge.
The current phase is built around a different proposition: that disabling the storefront is less useful if the organisation behind it retains its customers, bank accounts, payment channels and technical infrastructure.
Turkey is now trying to reach those layers at the same time.
