Turkey reserves front row seat for cocaine traffickers

Swedish website “Nordic Monitor” revealed that Turkey has emerged as an emerging avenue for large-scale cocaine smuggling, in an unprecedented development attributed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policy of firing competent officers under the pretext of an attempt coup d’etat.

All eyes were on Turkey in June 2020, when Colombian police confiscated around 5 tons of cocaine in two containers preparing to travel by sea from the municipality of Buenaventura to Turkey, worth 265 million. of dollars.

The late Colombian Minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, announced through their official Twitter account that 4.9 tons of cocaine had been confiscated by Colombian anti-drug units.

Early investigations indicated that the drugs were supposed to be transported along the Colombian coast to Central America and later to Turkey.

And the Colombian defense minister officially announced that the cocaine shipment that had been seized was destined for Turkey.

According to the “Nordic Monitor”, this same information has important repercussions given that Turkey was not a destination or a transit point for cocaine.

The operation did not result in the arrest of anyone, but an investigation was opened with the support of the prosecution to determine the owners of the drug shipment.

According to the Colombian Defense Ministry, this was the largest maritime shipment of cocaine seized in months.

“Five tons of cocaine is an incredibly huge amount for Turkey as a destination and transit point,” said a former drug police official, speaking on condition of anonymity for reasons of security, to the Nordic Monitor.

He added that “Turkey’s largest cocaine confiscation did not exceed a few hundred kilograms”.

The official clarified that “without a market ready for distribution and consumption, and without the necessary relationships – internal and external – a drug leader with all his mental strength would not try to bring such an enormous amount to the market in Turkey”.

Turkey has never been mentioned in the global cocaine smuggling routes reported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime until recently.

The official stressed that “there has to be something that has changed the dynamics of the system, or there is a possibility for a new and powerful actor who wants to have a stake in the existing system, which is likely that a new system with a new actor who must have strong political coverage in Turkey until he has the audacity to transport such a quantity across the country.

He noted that with the purges of competent and specialized law enforcement officers, Turkey’s ability to intercept drug shipments has diminished.

According to the “Nordic Monitor”, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fired thousands of people, including prosecutors, judges and police, who have participated in investigations into corruption, extremist groups and drug traffickers, under pretext to investigate possible conspiracies against the government.