One of the most popular online gaming corporations, PartyGaming Plc, announced this week that they will no longer permit the citizens of Turkey access to any of their gaming sites.  The world’s leading listed online gaming company offers it’s customers a variety of online games and gambling activities via a number of secondary well known brands, PartyPoker, PartyCasino, PartyGammon, PartyGammon and PartyBets.com.

The decision to ban Turkish players from their sites is due to the recent passing of legislation by the Turkish government that prohibits particular forms of online gaming practices from being offered to citizens in Turkey by unauthorized foreign and domestic companies.  PartyGaming has declared that they have taken every reasonable step to ensure that Turkish customers will be denied access to any of their gaming sites.  

This decision will not make a huge impact on the overall revenues of Party Gaming since the revenue from the Turkey market represents a very insignificant proportion of their total revenues.  Prior to the departure out of Turkey, PartyGaming was  forced to pull out of the US market due to the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which, on the other hand, did greatly impact the Groups revenues.  Which doesn’t come as a big surprise since it has been reprted that about 80% of total online gambling revenues were coming from US customers.  

One of the industries leading online payment processors, NETeller has also come to the decision to deny citizens of Turkey use of their services.  NETeller got themselves into some trouble after the laws changed in the US and have sharply taken steps to avoid any problems they may have encountered in Turkey.