Turkey masked true culprits behind drug trafficking network after largest cocaine seizure in the country’s history

Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm

In a further indication of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government’s lack of genuine interest in tackling cocaine trafficking, a trial involving the largest cocaine shipment ever seized in the nation’s history concluded with only a handful of minor players receiving prison sentences. The masterminds behind the operation, along with their close associates in government agencies, remain unexposed and unpunished.

The case began when Turkey’s General Directorate of Customs Enforcement (Gümrük Muhafaza Genel Müdürlüğü) received an anonymous tip on June 14, 2021 at 14:40 reporting a shipment of cocaine concealed in boxes of bananas imported from Ecuador.

The tip was unusually specific, suggesting that it may have originated from an insider, a law enforcement officer or a competitor with detailed knowledge of the shipment. It identified the MSC Capucine R, a freighter sailing under the Liberian flag and transporting containers of bananas, as the vessel in question. The tip further pinpointed a specific container, ID tag TEMU958118-0, which was said to contain a significant quantity of cocaine, and indicated that the ship would be arriving at Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Mersin.

When customs officials and police conducted a thorough search of nearly 100 containers loaded onto the ship, using X-ray machines and drug-sniffing dogs, they discovered 1,120 shrink-wrapped packages of cocaine hidden in two containers. The seized cocaine weighed 1.3 tons and had an estimated value of $63.9 million.

The shipment was destined for a Mersin-based food company, Öz Şimşekler Gıda İç ve Dış Ticaret Sanayi Limited Şirketi. According to trade registry records, the company was established in October 2001 as a family enterprise. Nimet Şimşek is listed as the owner, with other family members registered as partners.

Trade registry data for Öz Şimşekler Gıda İç ve Dış Ticaret Sanayi Limited Şirketi:

ÖzSimsekler_Food_compnay_trade_data

The cargo had been loaded at the Puerto Bolivar terminal in Ecuador, a facility operated by the Turkey-based Yılport Holding A.Ş since 2016. Yılport’s name and its facility in Ecuador had come up in previous drug busts as well. The compony and its CEO, Robert Yüksel Yıldırım, denied any knowledge or involvement in the trafficking of drugs.

“At our Puerto Bolívar port, we receive sealed containers into our facility, and after they pass through customs and security inspections, we load them onto the ships. … We only carry out port operations. Our responsibility is limited to loading cargo onto ships and unloading cargo from ships,” the statement posted on the company’s website said on May 8, 2021 after a seizure of cocaine in Panama while en route from Ecuador’s Puerto Bolivar terminal to Turkey’s Mersin port.

In the June 2021 drug bust in Turkey, police detained Nimet Şimşek, the owner of Öz Şimşekler Gıda, along with his son, Halil İbrahim Şimşek, and three employees: Erdal Şakırdak, the warehouse manager; Mesut Sekin, the operations and customs manager; and Rojbun Soylu, the certifying officer for agricultural products.

In his statement Şimşek denied the charges, asserting that he had purchased the bananas from the Slovenian Rastoder company in Ljubljana after a conversation with its owner, Izet Rastoder, on June 8, 2021. He further explained that by the time he made the purchase, the ship had already left Ecuador and was at sea.

The bill of lading confirms that the purchase of banana containers, including the container with ID TEMU958118-0 containing 1,156 kilograms of cocaine, was made while it was still on the ship. However, the second container with ID SZLU912122-2, which held 145 kilograms of cocaine, was purchased before the ship’s departure and was sent directly to the Turkish company by Rastoder and its affiliated firms in Ecuador.

The Turkish Ministry of Trade released a video of the cocaine bust from the June 2021 operation:

When asked about his plans for reselling the bananas after delivery, Şimşek explained that the shipment would be stored at the company’s warehouse in the Mersin Port’s free zone. From there, the bananas would be inspected and then distributed to various customers in smaller quantities. He said that at that time, no purchase orders had been placed for the incoming banana shipment.

Investigators, however, concluded that the security tags on the containers remained intact throughout the entire shipment. They determined that company employees could have easily detected the drugs once the containers were unloaded in the company’s warehouse. Given that the free zone area is under constant camera surveillance and is guarded, it would have been impossible for drug traffickers to remove the shipment during its transit from the port to the free zone.

However, a significant portion of this mysterious drug bust, which came to light only after the anonymous tip, is entirely missing from the case file. Turkish authorities could have potentially identified the entire network operating within Turkey rather than just the receiving company listed in the bill of lading had they observed a 1997 regulation permitting controlled delivery under police surveillance.

The regulation, rooted in laws aimed at combating money laundering and drug trafficking, allows authorities to permit illegal shipments to proceed in order to identify the full extent of the criminal network involved. This approach facilitates a comprehensive crackdown on the entire operation, enhancing the effectiveness of law enforcement efforts against organized crime activities.

Turkish police utilized this regulation in the landmark corruption investigations that became public in December 2013. These investigations uncovered a vast graft network involving money laundering as well as the trafficking of cash and gold to Iran to circumvent US sanctions. Despite discovering couriers and cash en route to deliver bribes to government officials, through wiretaps, surveillance and staged traffic stops, the police allowed these transactions to proceed. This strategy enabled them to unravel the broader network and gather incriminating evidence to support their case.

Ultimately, the corruption investigations reached the highest levels of Turkish leadership, including then-prime minister Erdogan, four ministers, their family members and close business and political associates. The probes revealed billions of dollars in illicit funds flowing to Iran through various schemes within the Turkish banking and financial systems. Erdogan defended the suspects, alleging a judicial coup against his government. He effectively quashed the investigation by dismissing police chiefs, prosecutors and judges involved in overseeing the graft probes.

Text of Turkish regulation that authorizes the police to allow controlled delivery in order to identify the entire network of criminal organizations: 

regulation_on_controlled_delivery

At the time one of the main questions raised by Erdogan and his associates was why the police did not halt the criminal activities upon initial detection but instead allowed them to continue. In defense against this allegation during a hearing on November 6, 2018 at the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court, Nazmi Ardıç, who served as chief of the organized crime desk in Istanbul during the graft probes involving Iranian sanctions buster Reza Zarrab, cited the regulation on controlled delivery. He explained that this approach was employed to expose the entire criminal syndicate involved in the investigations.

“In an organized crime investigation, particularly one targeting smuggling networks, all people involved along the entire route should be thoroughly identified,” he said, adding that “as a result, you wouldn’t just end up with a truck and one ton of heroin on it; you would have documented evidence of the source, who it came from, who transported it, who protected it, who provided assistance and ultimately, who received the goods.”

“This approach effectively dismantles the entire organization. This method, known as controlled delivery, is a key strategy in the fight against organized smuggling,” Ardiç testified.

However, this procedure was not applied in the seizure of the 1.3 tons of cocaine. In fact, Turkish authorities have rarely employed this regulation in drug interceptions over the past decade, fueling suspicions that high-level figures within the Turkish government might be protecting drug trafficking operations. This has led to concerns that only a small portion of drug shipments are seized, while the majority continue undetected.

The only notable exceptions seem to occur when foreign governments specifically request Turkey’s coordination for controlled delivery operations during investigations of drug shipments in transit.

An opposition lawmaker from Mersin province submitted a motion to parliament in April 2022 calling for an investigation into why the police did not implement the controlled delivery regulation to expose the entire drug smuggling network. The motion, however, failed to gain traction in parliament, which is dominated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The MHP is known for its close association with organized crime, mafia groups and drug traffickers.

“In recent times, the frequent association of Mersin, my electoral district, with drug trafficking in the public eye raises concerns about a potential security lapse in the area. It also suggests that the necessary precautions and inspections are not being adequately implemented,” said Ali Mahir Başarır, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Criticizing government officials who were seen publicly associating with drug traffickers, the lawmaker said, “The routes through which drugs enter our country, the individuals responsible for bringing them in, those who receive them and the forces behind this operation must be thoroughly investigated and immediately exposed.”

That, however, did not happen in the case of the 1.3 tons of seized cocaine. A 16-page indictment was filed on October 28, 2021 under investigation file 2021/2376, five months after the seizure, and was limited to only the five suspects detained during the cocaine seizure in June. It was obvious that Turkish authorities rushed to close the case without further investigation. They did not seek assistance from Ecuador or Slovenia to follow leads but instead aimed to expedite the conclusion of the case.

The indictment leaves many questions unanswered. For instance, the various markings on the packages suggested that the drugs were intended for at least four separate clients. Additionally, a GPS tracking device was found alongside the drugs, indicating that traffickers were monitoring the shipment in real time as it traveled from Ecuador to Turkey. The indictment noted that no information was obtained from the examination of the GPS tracking device.

Turkish authorities did not seek assistance from agencies such as the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which has advanced resources for analyzing drug trafficking operations. The DEA could have potentially assisted Turkey in accessing and extracting valuable information from the GPS device, which might have provided crucial insight into the scope of the drug trafficking network.

The phone records of the company’s owner, Nimet Şimşek, and his son between January 1, 2021 and June 18, 2021 revealed frequent calls to Italy, Malta, Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. However, no follow-up on these calls was conducted by public prosecutor Mehmet Aktaş, who could have sought assistance from the authorities of these countries through judicial assistance requests facilitated by the Turkish Ministry of Justice.

Instead, the prosecutor opted to charge only the five suspects with drug trafficking and requested that the court impose prison sentences ranging from 45 to 67 years.

While the investigation was still ongoing, an additional 61 kilograms of cocaine were seized on October 20, 2021 from a banana container that arrived at the same port on the MSC Naisha III, sailing under the Liberian flag. This shipment was also destined for Öz Şimşekler Gıda. Authorities arrested Şimşek’s other son, Bedirhan Şimşek, in connection with this shipment, and the case was subsequently merged with the one from June.

The case was tried at the Mersin 8th High Criminal Court. In April 2022 the court released four of the six suspects, leaving only Nimet Şimşek and his son Bedirhan in custody. In the final hearing on December 23, 2022, the court sentenced Nimet to 30 years in prison and Bedirhan to more than 27 years, while acquitting the four other suspects. The verdicts were upheld on appeal by the Supreme Court of Appeals on February 16, 2024.

In the last decade Turkey has emerged as a major cocaine hub under President Erdogan’s rule, according to UN reports. Many drug seizures in Spain, Colombia and elsewhere have revealed that the drugs were destined for Turkey. The Erdogan government has been accused of allowing drug traffickers and mafia groups to operate in Turkish territory with relative impunity, providing them with political cover that facilitated their activities.

Many drug traffickers, mafia figures and criminals have acquired Turkish citizenship through fast-track naturalization programs introduced by the Erdogan government in recent years, and some even adopted Turkish names. They benefited from tax-free wealth amnesty laws pushed through parliament by the Erdogan administration, which guaranteed that no criminal or administrative investigations would be conducted into the source of funds brought to Turkey and deposited in Turkish banks.

The trafficking network in Turkey is believed to be controlled by Ağar, a notorious nationalist politician and former minister who has secured the backing of far-right nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli as well as President Erdogan. Many mafia groups are linked to Bahçeli’s MHP, whose loyalists hold significant positions within the judiciary, police and intelligence agencies in Turkey.

Turkish authorities seem to take action against organized crime and drug trafficking networks primarily in response to mounting international pressure. Even when investigations are initiated, they often focus on a few scapegoats rather than uncovering the true masterminds and their protectors within the government, judiciary and law enforcement agencies.