report reveals Turkey’s involvement in facilitating drug trade
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has revealed that Turkey is increasingly involved in the global cocaine trade.
According to a report issued by the office, since 2014, the amount of cocaine seized in Turkey has increased five times, while about two tons of drugs were seized in 2020.
In turn, the investigator at the United Nations Office, Antoine Villa, said: “ The Turkish drug-trafficking mafia holds the largest share of the European cocaine market, besides that Turkey plays mainly a role as a transit country for cocaine heading to Southeast and Eastern Europe.”
Villa added that large quantities of drugs were confiscated in documented cases in Turkey, and shipments in Latin American countries between 2020 and 2021 were on their way to Turkey.
Information and documents also indicated that a plane registered in the name of the charter airline “ICM AIR” based in Istanbul was discovered in 2021 that was about to transport 1.3 tons of cocaine.
The information and documents indicated that the plane was owned by the Turkish state before it was sold to the company and that those planes were the ones that the head of the Turkish regime, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, used as a way to escape from the plotters of the 2016 coup, according to the Turkish government’s own account.
A report on the American “International Interest” website revealed the involvement of officials from the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey in facilitating drug trade and protecting traffickers in Turkey.
The website indicated that 100 kilograms of heroin was seized in 2020 in the car of a former press advisor at the Turkish embassy in Brussels.
The website revealed that Turkey’s ongoing financial collapse and its increasing need for foreign currency in the midst of draining the net reserves of this currency for its central bank will only make the political elite more accepting of the appeal of drug dollars.
Inas Abdulkareem