Interior Ministry announced Thursday that more than 1 ton of cannabis and 2.1 million cannabis plants were seized during operations against the PKK terrorist group.
Operations were held in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, the latest in a string of operations named after Eren Bülbül, a boy killed by the terrorists in northern Turkey in 2017 and Mehmet Çelik, a specialist sergeant who was killed last year in a clash with terrorists in the area.
Troops from the local gendarmerie unit in Diyarbakır, gendarmerie commando units and elite Special Operations branch of the gendarmerie, as well as village guards, a paramilitary force aiding security forces, participated in the operations. The ministry said some 1,165 personnel raided rural locations in Lice, a district of Diyarbakır. It did not say whether any suspects were caught during the operations, which targeted 136 locations in two rural neighborhoods. Security forces found 989 kilograms (2180 pounds) of cannabis in powder form, 62 kilograms of unprocessed cannabis and more than 2.1 million cannabis plants illegally being grown and hidden among other crops while combing the two areas, along with three AK-47 rifles and 20 kilograms of ammonium nitrate used in explosives.
Sharing the details of the operation on his social media account, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said they were determined to root out the drugs trade and terrorism.
In recent years, Turkey stepped up efforts to cut off drug supplies to the PKK, which is believed to be the largest narcotics trafficker to Europe, with Interpol estimating up to 80% of European illicit drug markets being supplied by PKK-controlled trafficking networks. Apart from playing a key part in the drug trafficking between Europe and Asia, the terrorist group uses several regions it controls in northern Iraq and Syria as production hubs for heroin and other drugs.
Lice, known as PKK's birthplace in 1978, has been on the receiving end of anti-drug raids in the past as well. A small district with a population of about 26,000 people, Lice has a slow economy apart from agriculture and livestock breeding and is infamous for PKK-controlled drug production. Experts say Lice and the southeastern region are favored for the cultivation of cannabis because its climate is favorable and the mountainous terrain hinders easy access to security forces. Although no concrete numbers are available, authorities believe about two-thirds of the illegal cannabis cultivated in Turkey is grown around Diyarbakır.
Elsewhere, Commerce Minister Mehmet Muş, whose ministry is in charge of customs, announced that customs guards in Istanbul and Hakkari made large drug seizures. Muş said in a social media post that about 2 million Captagon pills were captured in Istanbul, while 742 kilograms of methamphetamine were seized at the Esendere border crossing in the southeastern province of Hakkari, bordering Iran.
Captagon, created in 1960s as an alternative to other synthetic drugs, has proliferated in the Middle East in recent years and several terrorist groups, including Daesh, are believed to profit from its trade. Methamphetamine use is also on the rise in the region while Turkey's Interior Ministry has warned about the proliferation of its use among drug users in the country.
Turkey is a transit route for drug smugglers operating between Asia and Europe. Drugs from Asia are smuggled into Europe via Turkey while synthetic drugs produced in Europe are being smuggled into the Middle East. The country, however, stepped up its efforts to stamp out drug trafficking from which terrorist groups and international gangs profit.
