Long a major route of heroin smuggling from Afghanistan to Europe, Turkey in recent years has seen an increase in cocaine trafficking as well, leading some to suggest that the country has become a cocaine distribution hub from Latin America to Europe and the Middle East. Yet the issue has only recently come into public focus following bombshell allegations by a Turkish mobster on the run.

In a series of viral videos from Dubai since early May, Sedat Peker, a convicted criminal gang leader, has flung accusations of malfeasance and corruption at members and cronies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), including claims that high-profile figures are involved in cocaine smuggling from Colombia. 

A grave indication of Turkey’s growing prominence as a cocaine route came in June 2020 when Colombian officials announced the seizure of 4.9 tons of cocaine bound for Turkey in shipping containers at the Pacific port of Buenaventura.

Then, in early May, authorities at Panama’s PSA port seized 616 packages of cocaine hidden in a banana shipment from Ecuador, which was en route to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Mersin. The Ecuadorian port of Puerto Bolivar, from where the container set off, is operated by Turkish company Yilport under a 50-year contract signed in February 2016 in the presence of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Ecuadorian counterpart. The company denied any responsibility for the illicit cargo, saying that narcotics seizures at the port had increased nine times since it took over.