Turkey has fined Adidas over $15,000 for failing to inform customers that one of its flagship footwear models contained pigskin.
The German sportswear company was penalized 550,059 Turkish lira ($15,200) by the country’s advertising regulator for marketing the “Samba OG” trainers—popular among celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid—as “real leather” without disclosing the use of pigskin.
According to a ruling seen by a foreign news agency on Thursday, the regulator stated that materials conflicting with the religious beliefs of the majority must be explicitly mentioned in advertisements and product descriptions.
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Adidas acknowledged the fine and confirmed that it had updated the product description on its Turkish e-commerce website. “Following an individual notification regarding a product description on our Turkish e-com website, we have updated the material specifications for the product accordingly,” the company stated.
In 2020, Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs ruled that manufacturing shoes or clothing from pigskin or pigskin hair is not permissible, emphasizing that pigskin cannot be purified through tanning or similar processes—an interpretation widely upheld by Muslim scholars.
