President Recep Tayyip Erdogan created a new controversy on Feb. 9, Turkey's Quit Smoking Day, when he appeared to link addiction to alcohol and tobacco to poetry, literature and cinema. In a country where censorship is already rife, his remark sparked concern that fresh restrictions might be in store.

On Feb. 9, left-leaning Cumhuriyet, a vocal critic of the government, published a story headlined “Erdogan: Poems, novels and cinema cause addictions just like smoking.” A number of other news sites, including the popular T24, picked up the story, leading many to wonder where Turkey is going and whether poetry, fiction and cinema are under threat.

Sabah, which is very close to Erdogan, slammed Cumhuriyet for distorting the president’s words and quoted him as saying, “Movies, novels and poems encouraging alcohol and smoking have been introduced. As we know, this method has been used extensively in our country.”

According to the state-run Anatolia News Agency, Erdogan said, “Frankly, I believe that the great financial might of the [tobacco] industry is behind music, films, novels and poems encouraging habits that lead to addictions like alcohol and smoking. … You would have noticed that in almost all the movies of the 1960s and 1970s, smoking and alcohol are in the foreground.”