In a dramatic crackdown, Turkey’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on April 17 that authorities had detained 525 suspected drug dealers, calling the operation the largest of its kind in the country’s history.
The extensive raid took place in Ankara, and Yerlikaya wasted no time sending a clear message to those involved in the drug trade, stating, “We’ve shown those poison peddlers once again: the streets you have entered are a dead end.”
The operation came after months of meticulous surveillance, both technical and physical, over the past six months. It was a massive, well-coordinated effort involving 4,768 police officers, 1,461 teams, 40 specially trained detector dogs, 4 drones, and aerial support units.
Yerlikaya assured the public that the fight against the drug trade would continue, with more arrests expected in the coming days. The Turkish operation came on the heels of a significant Europe-wide bust earlier in the week, led by Europol and several law enforcement agencies across multiple countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Belgium. That operation resulted in over 230 arrests and the confiscation of $400 million in assets related to international drug trafficking and money laundering.
With the stakes higher than ever, Turkey is doubling down on its efforts to tackle the drug crisis head-on.
