Abstract
Traditionally, Turkish security officials were engaged with state-level threats from Iran. Their primary concerns were export of revolutionary ideology, sponsorship of terrorism, proliferation of nuclear weapons and energy blackmail. In the recent years, however, the nature of the threat has changed and diversified. Non-state actors, mainly transnational crime syndicates, have begun to pose a significant threat to both Turkey and Iran. Iranian drug networks (IDNs) have become the primary actors in heroin and methamphetamine trafficking through Turkey. The IDN threat transcends the jurisdictions of the two states and casts a debilitating impact on the Asia-Pacific countries. Despite a plethora of enacted initiatives, high profits sustain large-scale trans-regional methamphetamine trafficking. Retail prices in the Asia-Pacific markets approach hundred-fold profits over the production costs of methamphetamine in Iran. In this context, Turkish law-enforcement agencies report increasing amounts of methamphetamine seizures since 2009. The upsurge in seizure quantities is coupled with an escalation of cases and arrests. This paper investigates dimensions of the methamphetamine threat in Turkey, profiles of the actors, shipment routes, and modus operandi of the trafficking syndicates. It provides insight into a non-traditional non-state threat coming out of Iran. The inferences are based on an analysis of 183 methamphetamine case files and 81 provincial questionnaires of the Department of Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime (KOM).
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Notes
MNS is an acronym that stands for the Mali-Narkotik-Silah. It can be translated as Financial Crimes-Narcotics-Weapons. MNS is a highly sophisticated nation-wide information software that contains comprehensiveinformation about seizures, arrestees, methods, routes.
Another investigation method could be interviews with the methamphetamine arrestees. However, the Ministry of Justice do not allow scientific research on foreign convicts.
These figures are taken from a presentation of the Iranian delegate in the 47th. UNODC Subcommision Meeting on November 20, 2012.
This fact was stated by various law-enforcement executives from these countries in more than 10 international meetings that the authors attended.
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Authors are especially thankful to Dr. Fazli GÖKÇEGÖZ, Director of Central Narcotics, who granted the permission for academic study on methampetamine trafficking. Dr. GÖKÇEGÖZ also gave invaluable support to the data collection and processing. Authors also thank Mr. Osman Karakaş and Muhammet Demirci who helped in data collection and coding process.
KOM is a centralized counter-narcotics and organized-crime agency which covers all provinces of Turkey. For more information please see the agency’s website: www.kom.gov.tr
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Ekici, B., Ozbay, S. Iranian methamphetamine and Turkey: an emerging transnational threat. Trends Organ Crim 16, 286–305 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-013-9204-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-013-9204-6