Turkey’s Largest Vaping Forum Blocked (Illustrated)

According to a post by a Reddit user, the largest Turkish-language vaping forum, E-Sigara Forum (ESF), has been blocked online by the Turkish government.

At present, the ESF forum has 20,336 registered members, and its server is located in San Francisco, USA. Within Turkey, the site can only be accessed via VPN.

Citing a government response, the report says the site was blocked because it offered devices and products that may be harmful to health as rewards and sold prohibited products.

However, the source of the report said that Turkey is one of the world’s largest cigarette-consuming countries, and vaping devices only began to gain real momentum about three years ago. The source speculated that the government is uneasy about vaping because it does not collect tax revenue from it, while at the same time it earns substantial revenue from tobacco and alcohol, and therefore does not really want smokers to quit.