By Rob van der Gaast & Jolanda van Til

Living in Istanbul, Turkey, means meeting daily new experiences. This also happened last weekend, when we were enjoying the good life on a restaurant terrace on the small island Burgaz Ada in the Sea of Marmara.

Everywhere you go in Turkey, you will meet a Milli Piyango street vendor. This walking sales man can easily be recognized by his Milli Piyango hat, a Milli Piyango ID label and a bag. So, a very congenial person, wearing – in any case – a Milli Piyango hat and bag, selling lottery tickets, approached us and apart from the regular tickets, he offered us – as he called it – an 'extra' ticket.

We were surprised and we thought that at the threshold of the privatization of the Turkish National Lottery, a new gaming product was introduced! So we bought the white, glazed thick paper ticket, which was printed only on one side. Obviously nowhere on this ticket the name 'Milli Piyango' was written nor could any official stamp be found.

The creative entrepreneur was selling an illegal game (which he claimed to have produced himself) with numbers from 1 to 100, on which the buyer had to cross five numbers. After giving the ticket back to the vendor, he opened a small plastic black shutter at the top of the card, showing a number. If one of the five crossed numbers is corresponding with the hidden one, the player wins.

According to the people sitting at the next table, to whom the vendor sold several fake tickets as well, the prize of a winning number would be 60,000 YTL, which makes around 30,000 Euro.

The vendor came back to pick up the used ticket, however we insisted on keeping the fake ticket. He informed us that he already had to pay a fine once for selling illegal tickets. When asking him what the prize would be for a winning number, he mentioned prizes such as whisky and cigarettes or a free (real) Milli Piyango ticket.

Amazing was how many people bought those false tickets. The ticket price was merely 1 YTL (0.50 Euro) and the phoney vendor named his game 'Lotarya' (ekstra), which is not an existing word in Turkish but seems to be something like an inflexion of the word ‘lottery’.

After the vendor made us promise that we would not report him to the police, he thanked and greeted us by saying: "On a lovely Sunday like today, we are making our way through like this." Then he left for selling more tickets at the next restaurant.