Bloody score-settlings and shootouts between foreign thugs have been on the rise in Turkey, stoking criticism that lax legislation and inadequate action on the ground have made the country a safe haven for crime bosses from the region and beyond.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu maintains the Turkish police have been highly successful against mafia rings, including in thwarting attempts by Balkan and Caucasian gangs to base themselves in Turkey. From 2016 to 2022, the security forces broke up 550 mafia-style criminal groups, among them 16 regional ones, Soylu said this week. Skeptics, however, believe that those groups are mostly “small fish,” given that the presence of big-time foreign criminals in the country often comes to light as a result of gang wars rather than police pursuits.

In one of the highest-profile murders, Jovan Vukotic, the leader of Montenegro’s notorious Skaljari drug gang, was gunned down in his car in central Istanbul in September by two hitmen on a motorbike. Members of a rival clan, Kavac, and their Turkish collaborators stand accused of the murder. 

The feud between the Skaljari and Kavac clans is believed to have claimed at least 50 lives across the Balkans since 2015, prompting Vukotic to move from Montenegro to Turkey. Vukotic had been arrested in Turkey’s Mediterranean city of Antalya in 2018 before being deported to Serbia and then to Montenegro, where he spent a stint behind bars. Soylu had bragged about the nabbing of Vukotic but, as it turns out, he was able to return to Turkey in October 2021 and obtain a residence permit, using a forged passport.