Since the outbreak, Turks have been stockpiling cologne. One retailer reported a 3,400% increase in sales
, Turkey’s response to the covid-19 outbreak has not been out of the ordinary. The government has cancelled all international flights, sports events, and communal prayers at the country’s 90,000 mosques. Schools, universities and restaurants have been closed. People over 65 and under 20 have been ordered to stay at home.
Unlike other countries, however, Turkey has also made it a matter of policy to keep its citizens supplied with cologne. On March 18th President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to distribute the stuff to the elderly. Days later, local producers pledged they would not raise prices during the pandemic. Officials vowed that stocks would never run low.
Turkey is a land of germophobes. Food vendors hand out wet-wipes. The secular and pious alike wash their hands religiously. Asked how often they do so after a trip to the toilet in a 2015 survey, Turks scored higher than any country in Europe save Bosnia and Herzegovina, trouncing France , Italy and the Netherlands .
But nothing quite matches Turkey’s love for cologne. Named after the German city in which it was invented, cologne arrived in the Ottoman empire in the 19th century. It found a brand ambassador in Sultan Abdulhamid II, who carried Atkinsons cologne wherever he went and could get through a bottle in a matter of hours.
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