Seven vessels owned by Turkish citizens carrying a total of 28 tonnes of cocaine worth $10bn have been seized in the past three years, local news portal Halk TV reported on May 23.

Just recently, the Italian police announced an operation that caught the seventh of the vessels, named M.E., owned by Turkish company “A.”, at a port in Livorno with two tonnes of cocaine, with a market value of $600mn.

The vessel was loaded with “cacao powder” at Guayaquil port in Ecuador. It passed through Panama’s Colon port and Columbia’s Cartagena port before sailing to Spain’s Vigo, Malaga and Valencia ports.

The ship also stopped off at Geneva port in Italy prior to Livorno. It is thought that Albanian and Italian groups are the owners of the cocaine that was shipped.

Company "A." banana boat

In November last year, another vessel in the ownership of company “A.”, named I.E., was caught by the Spanish police loaded with half a tonne of cocaine. The cocaine was found in a container loaded with bananas.

Joint operation off Canary Islands

In October 2024, the Spanish and French police seized 3.2 tonnes of cocaine found in a vessel named RAS, owned by Turkish nationals identified as I.K. and E.O., in a joint operation off the coast of the Canary Islands.

Thrown into sea off Sicily

In July 2023, crew aboard Plutus, a ship owned by Turkish national T.A., threw 5.3 tonnes of cocaine into the sea off the coast of Sicily. The Italian police impounded the vessel.

In March 2023, the Singapore Sprit, owned by Turkish national M.E., was stopped off the coast of Portugal. The police failed to detect drugs in the vessel and let it sail on.

But as it passed the coast of Sicily, the crew on the vessel dumped 2.3 tonnes of cocaine into the sea and the Italian police moved in. Later on, the name of the vessel was changed to Eren Bulbul.

In August 2022, a vessel named Ocean Blue, owned by Turkish national R.E.S., was caught with five tonnes of cocaine off the coast of Sicily. The vessel had sailed from Bodrum in Turkey, a town on the southern Aegean coast.

French navy action in Pacific

In January, the French navy caught a vessel, owned by a Turkish national named H. B. T., off the coast of Martinique island with nine tonnes of cocaine.

The vessel first journeyed to Guinea Bissau in Africa from Istanbul before sailing through Venezuela and Columbia. The vessel was sold to a Panama-based company five days before it left Istanbul.

Drug barons in Turkey

On May 17, Halk TV reported that the nine tonnes of cocaine caught by the French navy, worth $3bn, was owned by Iranian baron Naci Zindasti along with Turkish nationals A.O. and I.Y.

Zindasti was at one point in prison in Turkey. He was released with the intervention of the late Burhan Kuzu, a leading politician in the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

It is thought that Zindasti is currently in the UAE together with the other two Turkish nationals in question.

In January, Turkey extradited Dritan Rexhepi, also known as Gramos Rexhepi, a notorious cocaine trafficker, to Albania.

In 2023, Swedish police discovered highly classified intelligence, which was shared with Turkish counterparts, on the mobile phone of a drug gang leader, who was granted Turkish citizenship.

Many other drug barons have been located in Turkey. Some have been shot dead. There are armed gangs that frequently clash in Turkish cities.

No one asks

In 2008, Turkey introduced the first of its wealth amnesty laws. The legislation is still on the books. Put simply, no one asks “Where did you get this?” when someone brings cash or gold into Turkey.

In 2018, Turkey’s government launched the "Golden Passport" programme that grants citizenship in return for a real estate purchase worth a minimum of $0.4mn.

In 2022, unidentified FX inflows into Turkey under the “net errors and omissions” account of the country’s balance of payments (BoP) hit a record $27bn.

In 2021, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) watchdog placed Turkey on its grey list. In 2024, it decided to remove the country from the list.

Cocaine route changed in 2017

In 2017, the French and Dutch police infiltrated EncroChat, a Europe-based encrypted communications network that was used by drug smugglers.

In 2021, the Belgian and the Netherlands police accessed another encrypted messaging network, Sky ECC (developed by Canada-based Sky Global).

As a result of the operations, cocaine traffickers were identified and the South America to Antwerp/Rotterdam cocaine route was hit.

The record jump in cocaine seizures made by the Turkish police since 2017 demonstrate that criminal gangs, under pressure to develop a new transit route given heavy seizures in European countries, switched to a route through Turkey. The Turkish counter-narcotics department has been reiterating that fact in its annual reports covering the circulation of drugs.

There is no doubt that Turkey’s role as a transit country for cocaine has been expanding in recent years. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has several times underlined this in its annual Global Reports on Cocaine.

Turkey-to-Western Europe route a hit with traffickers

Some of the cocaine reaching Turkey arrives after transiting through Western Africa. Some comes directly from Latin America.

From Turkey, outbound cocaine flows westwards across the Black Sea and the Balkans on a route traditionally associated with the trafficking of opiates and the smuggling of cigarettes.

Turkey's neighbour Greece has also witnessed rising transit quantities of cocaine in recent years, much of it destined for the same Balkan route and the markets of Western Europe.

Brazil and Ecuador are often found to have been the countries of departure for seized cocaine shipments.

Turkey regularly seizes cocaine at its Mersin Port in banana crates shipped from Ecuador, while the European and South American police regularly seize ships carrying cocaine destined for Turkey.

One-in-10 rule

 

Chart: According to latest updates in the Turkish counter-narcotics department 2024 annual drugs report, Turkey’s cocaine seizures declined to 2.3 tonnes in 2022 and 2.5 tonnes in 2023 after hitting a record high of 2.8 tonnes in 2021. When the so-called one-to-10 rule is applied to these annual volumes, the calculation is that Turkey has an yearly cocaine trade volume of more than 20 tonnes, which suggests an annual market value of $6-7bn.

Analysts assessing the drug trade apply a rough one-to-10 rule to estimate an actual drug flow based on seizures, with the great majority of drugs making it through to markets.

Banana shipments are seen as "the usual suspect" in the cocaine trade. Cheese shipments are also popular with cocaine dispatchers.

Ecuador annually exports around 3mn tonnes of bananas. Turkish port operator Yilport Holding, a unit of Yildirim Group Holding, bought 50-year port concession rights at Puerto Bolivar in Colombia in 2016.