Turkey targets offshore licensing hubs in crackdown

• Turkey’s MPI blocked 51,263 US-hosted sites and thousands linked to the Isle of Man and Armenia.
• Investigators identified 84,585 illegal gambling websites operating from 70 countries in 2025, including platforms in Israel.
• Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz estimated in May that the illegal betting market is worth $20 billion to $60 billion.

Turkey’s General Directorate of the National Lottery Administration (MPI) has named Curaçao, Malta, the Isle of Man and Seychelles as the offshore licensing hubs underpinning illegal betting platforms aimed at Turkish players.

The regulator’s latest assessment found that most unauthorised gambling reaching Turkey is operated from outside the country, with the United States topping the list of hosting locations.

Offshore hosting patterns

Operators typically host infrastructure in jurisdictions such as the United States, then lean on licences issued by offshore regulators to lend their sites a veneer of legitimacy before targeting Turkish customers.

MPI’s data shows the United States hosts the largest cluster of sites, followed by the Isle of Man, Armenia and Colombia. Authorities have blocked 51,263 US-hosted domains, 5,745 tied to the Isle of Man and 5,698 linked to Armenia.

The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) has been notified to restrict roughly 535,000 websites connected to illegal gambling. The wider sweep identified 84,585 illegal gambling sites operating out of 70 countries in 2025, among them platforms based in Israel.

Enforcement moves beyond blocking

Turkish officials describe illegal betting as an organised-crime issue, citing links to money laundering, terrorism financing and drug trafficking that draw in users across every age group and income level.

Tactics have shifted accordingly. Under 152 separate administrative rulings, regulators went after gambling content embedded inside digital games and gaming platforms, pulling more than 5.58 million webpages, images, audio files and payment-related assets.

Monitoring now covers domain registrations, redirect services and the mobile entry points bettors use to reach these platforms. Social media accounts, messaging apps and app-based redirects have all faced restrictions, and 12,548 servers and connection addresses have been taken offline.

Financial squeeze intensifies

Money-flow controls sit alongside the technical measures. Regulators have restricted cryptocurrency transactions tied to illegal betting, flagged suspicious activity for investigation and referred cases for prosecution, with asset seizures following in some instances.

Licensing bodies have acted too: 11 organisations were ordered to halt operations, and four had their licences revoked outright.

The report lands amid a run of Turkish enforcement stories this year. MASAK placed millions of citizens under surveillance earlier in 2026, building on an illegal gambling war that has run hot since the 11th Judicial Package took effect.

Turkish banks moved early too, issuing consumer warnings on illegal gambling risks, while MPI first backed the crackdown formally back in late 2025.

Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz put a figure on the problem in May, estimating the illegal betting economy at $20 billion to $60 billion, while acknowledging that a market operating outside the law resists precise measurement.

Operators licensed in Curaçao, Malta or the Isle of Man now face a regulator increasingly treating offshore paperwork as a risk indicator rather than a shield, and the enforcement machinery built this year gives Ankara the reach to act on it.