Is Methaqualone (Quaaludes) legal in Turkey?

Legal status

Methaqualone is a controlled substance in Turkey and the dossier carries it under the schedule name methaqualone, a VERIFIED placement in the classification decisions made under article 19 of Law No. 2313 on the Control of Narcotic Substances. It belongs to the small group of substances that were once ordinary prescription medicines and are now controlled with no lawful product behind the control, which is the situation article 19 was drafted for: it reaches poisons outside the 1933 article 1 list whose harm and capacity to produce toxicomania have been shown by scientific examination. Because no current Turkish marketing authorisation stands behind it, the prescription facing provisions of the Penal Code have nothing to attach to on this row, and the substance is reached by the trafficking and use articles alone.

Consequences if caught

Capital exposure: none. The cited instruments give no per-substance numeric quantity threshold; purpose and circumstances are assessed case by case, and the ceiling is 30 years under article 188(1) of Penal Code No. 5237, with aggravating multipliers in article 188(4), (5) and (8). Article 188(3) sets not less than ten years for selling, offering for sale, giving to another, dispatching, transporting, storing, purchasing, accepting and possessing without licence or contrary to licence, and with no licensed methaqualone product in existence every holding is without licence by definition. Article 188(1) covers manufacture, import and export at twenty to thirty years with a fine of two thousand to twenty thousand days, and methaqualone reaching a market at all now implies clandestine manufacture rather than diversion. Article 191(1) sets two to five years for possession for use and for use itself, with the five year deferral of 191(2) and at least one year of denetimli serbestlik under 191(3), and article 192(4) provides that a user who applies to the authorities or to a health institution for treatment before an investigation has begun is not sentenced.

If prescribed or medical

There is no prescription route for methaqualone in Turkey. It has no current marketing authorisation, the dossier recorded no prescription instrument for this row, and historical availability as a hypnotic in other countries confers nothing now. Article 188(6) of the Penal Code extends the trafficking paragraphs to substances whose sale depends on a prescription written by an authorised physician and which produce a narcotic or stimulant effect, but a withdrawn medicine has no such sale to depend on. No per-substance medical route is asserted here.

Documentation

No document makes methaqualone lawful to carry, and there is no historical prescription that revives it. A traveller offered tablets described as Mandrax or Quaaludes should understand that what is actually pressed into them is a matter for the laboratory report taken under article 20 of Law No. 2313, and that the charge will follow that report. Sedatives that do have a lawful Turkish route are handled on their own rows in this corpus. The schedule name was read in the dossier on 18 September 2026 and article 19 with articles 188 and 191 were read from the consolidated texts on 20 September 2026.

Drug laws and enforcement change and vary within a country. This is not legal advice. Always confirm with Turkey’s embassy or official drug authority before traveling; penalties can be severe, including imprisonment.