La Casa del Habano Istanbul without cigars. Sources from Turkey confirmed that the La Casa del Habano Istanbul is almost out of cigars. There are only a few boxes left in stock and new stock is months away. A new shipment of cigars is currently at Turkish customs but won’t be released anytime soon.

Extreme legislation

Turkey is notorious for being a difficult country to import tobacco. There are only a few brands available, even though the Turkish people love their cigars. Even large, well-established cigar companies have tremendous difficulties getting their cigars into the Eurasian country. And there are several distributors with Turkish roots importing tobacco into other countries, but they don’t expand to Turkey due to the crazy legislation.

In the case of the La Casa del Habano, the new shipment is delayed due to licensing problems. At the moment, it is unclear to us if it is a licensing issue from Habanos or the local Habanos distributor in Turkey, Phoenicia Turkey. Or that the problem lays elsewhere. But the Turkish government is not helping, that is for sure. The issue has been taking more than a month and is expected to take at least another month. The Turkish government rather lets a retailer suffer, and possibly go bankrupt, then to speed up their slow procedures and help a law-abiding taxpayer to continue to make a living.

We reached out to Phoenicia Turkey, the local distributor. We e-mailed some questions about the situation and are awaiting a reply. We do hope that the situation is resolved quickly and that the damage for the La Casa del Habano is not extensive. It is sad to see a hard-working retailer go under due to reasons outside his power. And it has to be resolved for the Turkish brothers and sisters of the leaf as well. We will keep you updated.

More information on the La Casa del Habano franchise can be found in this article: La Casa del Habano.