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Raki bottles tell story of Turkey's changes

The story of raki under the Justice and Development Party is the story of Turkey’s Islamic conservative transformation in a nutshell.

An employee checks bottles for Turkey's popular alcoholic drink raki at the Infotex Alkollu Icecekler plant in the town of Dinar, Turkey,  November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas - RC119E706970
An employee checks raki bottles at the Infotex Alkollu Icecekler plant in the town of Dinar, Turkey, Nov. 30, 2017. — Reuters/Umit Bektas

A “big one” is what Turks colloquially call a 700-milliliter bottle of raki, the distilled alcoholic beverage known as the country’s national booze. The story of the “big one” under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the story of Turkey’s religious-conservative transformation as a result of political Islam taking over the state, the resistance of secular quarters to this transformation and the tensions between different segments of society, polarized along this axis. To understand the process, one does not need to drink from the “big one”; reading the bottle correctly and what it signifies would be enough.

To start with what raki actually is, the definition of the Turkish Food Codex says the drink is made of homegrown grapes and aniseed, and stands out among other distilled spirits for its distinctive production method, which is based on a traditional copper distiller technology.

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