Turkey Treats Influencer Betting Ads as a Crime

Turkey detained 27 people, including high-follower Instagram accounts, in a 16-province raid on December 27, 2024, aimed at illegal betting ads. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the four-month cyber inquiry targeted people who advertised unlicensed sites and urged others to play.

The same day, Istanbul prosecutors arrested three of those influencers, while three others were reported to be abroad. The operation had a name, Siberağ-13, and it went after the people who made banned books look like ordinary content.

Police Swept 16 Provinces After Four Months of Cyber Work

Yerlikaya said prosecutors and the Cybercrime Department of the General Directorate of Security had spent four months on social platforms before the raids. The charge sheet was advertising illegal betting and virtual gambling sites, and encouraging people to play, not running a shop floor of cashiers.

He listed the provinces as Istanbul, Izmir, Gaziantep, Adana, Mersin, Ağrı, Antalya, Batman, Çorum, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Eskişehir, Iğdır, Isparta, Sakarya and Şırnak. Officers seized a large volume of phones, computers and other digital material, he said, and caught 27 suspects, including people described as social media influencers with large followings.

16 ilde "Yasa Dışı Bahis ve Sanal Kumar" suçuna yönelik düzenlenen "SİBERAĞ-13" operasyonlarında;

Aralarında Sosyal medya fenomeni olarak tabir edilen ve sosyal medya uygulamalarında yüksek takipçisi olan şüphelilerinde bulunduğu 27 kişi yakalandı❗

Yasa dışı bahis, sadece… pic.twitter.com/2OVGE680tU

— Ali Yerlikaya (@AliYerlikaya) December 27, 2024

The influencer arrests sat inside a stacked December. Eight days earlier, Siberağ-12 had already swept 54 provinces. A still earlier gendarmerie round, Siberağ-11, had gone after social ads and fraud in four provinces.

THE WEEK THE AD RAIDS STACKED UP

1. December 11, 2024: Siberağ-11 holds 46 suspects in four provinces, with 124 million lira in account activity tied to social ads, fake listings and illegal betting promotion.
2. December 19, 2024: Siberağ-12 holds 319 suspects in 54 provinces over crypto transfers used to buy infrastructure for foreign betting sites.
3. December 27, 2024: Siberağ-13 holds 27 people in 16 provinces after a four-month inquiry into high-follower accounts that advertised unlicensed betting.

Yerlikaya framed illegal betting as a threat to individuals and to society, and said virtual patrols were on duty around the clock. The public argument under that post was already sharper than a celebrity scandal. One reply asked why a football club’s Meritking advertising had not drawn the same attention, which is the point the raid actually raised: the state had started with lifestyle accounts, while banned-brand promotion around sport was already in plain view.

Seven Istanbul Influencers, Three of Them Already Abroad

Istanbul cyber patrols had watched high-follower accounts on Instagram and X, then moved on seven people the same morning. Four were taken in. Three were reported to be living outside Turkey. The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office named the detained group and said they were suspected of violating Law No. 7258, the sports-betting statute that also hits advertising.

THE ISTANBUL INFLUENCER LIST

The prosecutor’s office said the four who were held had used videos and still images, including logo placement, to push illegal betting to anyone who could open a public feed. Çato, Korkmaz and Bulut were jailed pending trial. Şahin walked under judicial control. Work continued on the three who had not been caught.

Korkmaz’s 1.3 million Instagram followers, and Serbes’s 1.2 million, were the figures that travelled with the case. The method was small on a screen and large in reach: a mark dropped onto a beauty, travel or entertainment post, then a tag or a link toward a site that Turkish users are not supposed to be able to open.

What Turkish Law Does to Anyone Who Advertises Illegal Betting

Promoting an unlicensed book is a crime in Turkey, not a grey marketing job. The Istanbul filing sat on Law No. 7258. Milli Piyango, the National Lottery Administration, publishes a parallel penalty schedule for unlicensed games of chance, including a prison term of one to three years for people who advertise those games or otherwise urge others to play, plus judicial fines of up to 3,000 days.

PRISON TERMS FOR UNLICENSED BETTING WORK

• Advertising and encouragement: One to three years in prison and up to 3,000 day-fines for people who use ads or other means to push unlicensed lotteries, chance games or mutual betting, under one to three years in prison for ads on Milli Piyango’s own illegal-games page.
• Running the game: Three to five years, and up to 10,000 day-fines, for people who organize those games or provide a place or means to play them without a state permit.
• Opening a foreign site to Turkey: Four to six years, and up to 5,000 day-fines, for people who let users in Turkey reach chance games run abroad.
• Moving the money: Three to five years, and up to 5,000 day-fines, for people who handle transfers tied to those games.
• Playing: An administrative fine of 5,000 to 20,000 lira for people who play third-party games, a lighter track than the prison terms for promoters.

A criminal-law briefing on advertising illegal betting as a criminal offence puts influencers, affiliates and banner hosts in the same 1-to-3-year band under Law No. 7258. Players on illegal sports books generally face administrative fines rather than jail, unless they cross into moving money or running the operation. That split is why a lifestyle account with a logo in the frame became a detention case while a punter with a small coupon often did not.

The prosecutor’s office said the ads harmed the economy and pulled young people toward easy money, and it compared illegal betting to a digital drug. The filing also listed the content niches that carried the ads: sport, beauty, travel, fashion, technology, health and entertainment. Those are the feeds unlicensed sites buy when domain blocks and payment cuts make ordinary search expensive.

The State Lottery and the 1998 Casino Ban

Turkey does not license private sportsbooks or online casinos. Casinos were shut after a 1996 law, which took effect on February 11, 1998. Non-state online gambling was banned in 2006. What remains legal is narrow: Milli Piyango for lottery products, Iddaa sports betting through the state sports-toto system, and horse-race betting under the Turkish Jockey Club.

That split is the business problem the influencer raids were built around. An offshore site can spin up a new domain after BTK, the communications authority, cuts the last one. It still needs Turkish-language faces to tell people where to go next. Paying a travel or beauty account is cheaper than rebuilding a brand every week, and it looks like ordinary posting until a cyber unit spends four months saving the frames.

Milli Piyango also files site-block requests under internet law 5651 and sends criminal complaints when it can identify advertisers, payment mules and players. In the 2024 calendar year it examined 232,899 internet sites for illegal chance games and, through reports plus 60 administrative decisions, obtained blocks on 219,692 of them. The largest origin bucket in that blocked set was the United States, at 129,594 sites, with Armenia, the Netherlands and Germany next.

The Ad Hunt Did Not Stop After Those Arrests

Siberağ-13 did not end the use of influencers. It showed that a high-follower account is now a police target, then the same theory kept showing up in later sweeps, account blocks and advertising-board orders.

On June 13, 2025, Yerlikaya announced 104 detentions in 36 provinces after a seven-month inquiry that again named high-follower influencer and anonymous accounts promoting illegal betting. In 2025 Milli Piyango reported 84,585 websites for closure, a smaller haul than 2024’s examined set, and it began asking criminal judges to restrict social accounts that steered users to unlicensed books. It said 2,105 of those accounts were blocked. The Advertising Board, under the trade ministry, separately restricted 30 high-follower accounts in August 2025 for illegal betting ads.

THE AD HUNT AFTER SIBERAĞ-13

• June 13, 2025: 104 people are detained in 36 provinces, including million-follower influencer and anonymous accounts accused of promoting illegal books.
• 2025 site reports: Milli Piyango sends 84,585 websites for closure and obtains blocks on 2,105 social accounts used to push unlicensed play.
• August 2025: The Advertising Board restricts 30 high-follower social accounts for illegal betting ads and live-betting promotion.
• September 15, 2026: The Interior Ministry says a five-day operation in 21 provinces has caught 150 suspects, with 76 arrested and 17 placed under judicial control, and lists advertising illegal betting sites among the alleged offences.

Interior officials have also started describing the product as a chain rather than a website. At a September 2026 panel they said the path runs from advertisements through social media, sport, influencers, games, mobile apps, payment firms, loans, bets, losses, debt and more betting. That is the second-order reading of Siberağ-13: the faces were not a side show. They were the top of a funnel the state now says it has to break in pieces.

The complaint that followed the first arrests is that a few months in custody does not price the work correctly. Offshore books still pay for a Turkish-language clip, and a promoter who leaves prison can film again. The later Rıdvan Çelik case in August 2026, built around illegal betting promotion and a lawyer’s note about whether the ads carried jail time, sat in the same groove. The cheap on-ramp is still a person with a camera.

A Market Estimated at $20 Billion to $60 Billion

Blocking domains and jailing promoters has not produced a small leftover market. On May 19, 2026, Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz told reporters the illegal betting sector was, in various assessments, worth $20 billion to $60 billion, a range he said was hard to pin down because the activity is hidden. He said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had ordered a multi-agency plan covering courts, communications, financial tracking, foreign cooperation and AI monitoring, with MASAK in the money trail.

A separate payment investigation, described by market-data firm Blask around the Malta-registered Paymix rails, said prosecutors matched 3.2 million records to national IDs on illegal betting activity. That ID match is not Yilmaz’s dollar range. It is a user-level file, and it is how the state can move from knocking down URLs to fining people. Administrative fines for players already sit in the thousands of dollars at current rates, which is a different lever from jailing an influencer for a logo in a frame.

Legal Iddaa and Milli Piyango products cannot offer the casino, slots and crash games that unlicensed sites use as bait. That gap is why the ads keep coming back on beauty and entertainment accounts after each block wave. A promoter in a travel video can sell a product the state shops are not allowed to put on the shelf.

Siberağ-13 made that sales job a detention risk. The September 15, 2026 Interior Ministry round, 150 people in 21 provinces, still listed advertising illegal betting sites on the charge sheet, which is the through-line from Korkmaz’s feed to the present. The logos moved. The hunt followed them.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on Turkish law-enforcement actions and gambling rules, and it is for information only. It is not legal advice, and it is not a guide to betting, advertising, or using blocked sites. Anyone facing a charge, a fine, or a commercial decision in this area should speak with a qualified Turkish criminal lawyer or licensed compliance counsel before acting. Figures, case statuses and market estimates reflect the official statements and data cited here and can change as investigations, courts and agencies update their numbers.