The Turkish lottery winners who lost everything

By Tuncay Kayaoglu

ISTANBUL

 On a sunny August day in 1993, Suleyman Orhan was sitting outside his cake shop with his cousin, impatiently checking a lottery winners’ list to see if he had been lucky enough to claim the big prize—2 billion Turkish liras ($170,000), a very large sum in Turkey at the time.

He had the lucky number! As he rushed to the local lottery office to claim the prize, he dreamt of expanding his business. He would make more money. Or so he thought…

With the New Year just around the corner, the Turkish National Lottery Directorate has prepared the annual special lottery draw for the occasion. Some 35 million tickets have been printed. Despite slim odds, hopeful Turks have lined up before kiosks to buy them. At least 80 percent of the tickets have already been sold.

The 2014 jackpot is 50 million Turkish lira ($21 million). In a country where the minimum wage is around 890 Turkish lira ($380), the sum is astronomical.

Many fantasize that hitting the jackpot paves a road to happiness. But for some winners, it is a highway to hell.

After winning, Suleyman decided to make a huge investment into his business.

“I had invested the money into our business and expand our chains throughout the Black Sea coastal region,” he says.

However, in 1994, the economy would shrink, the value of the U.S. dollar against the Turkish lira would skyrocket and unemployment would surge.

“We were not prepared for that economic crisis. We could not manage the chains and the money. So, we lost everything,” Suleyman says. “Money easily earned quickly goes.”

Suleyman, now 57, was well aware that earning or losing money was part of the life of a businessman.

There was however a silver lining. As his fortunes waxed and waned, his family never ceased supporting him throughout the difficult times. 

This was not the case for Mustafa Savgan, an orphan from the southern province of Adana.

Amazingly, he won the jackpot in 1982 and 1984, respectively pocketing 15 and 25 million Turkish liras – between 80,000 and 90,000 Eighties dollars, a huge sum at the time.

The odds that someone can hit the jackpot in Turkey are one in 10 million -less probable than being hit by a thunderbolt- one in 600,000. Erkan Isigicok, an economy professor from Bursa-based Uludag University, said the chance of hitting the jackpot twice, like Mustafa, was statistically “impossible.”

But the money brought him neither happiness nor a decent life. He kept working as a boot-polisher throughout the rest of his life.

“I am an uneducated person. I kept buying tickets. I lost all the money. I did not invest in anything,” Mustafa said in 2010.

A Turkish director even filmed a documentary on his life, called as “A millionaire boot-polisher.” He passed away this year, at the age of 66, in his hometown without any savings.

Similarly, Mustafa Sari, from the city of Denizli, won the jackpot in 1964 but wasted the money away. Now, at 64, he is at a care center and living on a retirement pension.

Misery stemmed from seemingly good luck is not reserved for Turkish lottery winners.

In 2003, Callie Rogers, Britain's youngest lottery winner at 16, wasted £1.9 million ($3 million). She spent it on illegal drugs, parties, plastic surgery… only to try to commit suicide three times.

Like Rogers, Michael Carroll won the UK National Lottery in 2002 when he was 19 years old. He squandered £9.7 million ($15 million) and is now reportedly working in a cookie factory.

Suleyman Orhan thinks that lottery winners were “inexperienced” with money.

“They did not know money much. In some cases, they received bad advice from friends or relatives,” he says.

Mustafa Savgan also admitted that he did not know what to do with the money and just wasted it. 

But Nimet Ozden, who runs a famous ticket agency in Istanbul, blames these people for losing the prized sum. “If a person is wise enough, he would know what to do with the prize. If he is stupid, well there is nothing we can do for that person,” she bluntly told The Anadolu Agency. 

Nevzat Tarhan, professor of psychology at Istanbul Uskudar University, believes it is not the person but the money that ruins a winner’s life.

He cites research that demonstrates that the lives of lottery winners had in fact worsened after acquiring large sums of money and that their relationship with others had also deteriorated.

“In a sense, they went through a severe trauma,” Tarhan writes on his website, though he does add that there have been a few people who invested the money cleverly.

Suleyman Orhan is now retired but still runs a small canteen. He spends some of his time in the countryside, enjoying his time with friends and leading a happy life.

“The money does not bring any happiness. Dogs eat everything except money. You do the math,” he said. 

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