From Fentanyl to Cocaine: The Rise of Turkish Criminal Networks in Latin America

In June, Turkish authorities seized 373 kilograms of cocaine from Ecuador. Two months earlier, in April, Turkish police seized 608 kilograms of cocaine in an operation across three provinces. In 2021, Turkish security forces seized the largest shipment of cocaine in the country’s history, 1,300 kilograms, also from Ecuador. According to experts and groups that monitor organized crime, these seizures increasingly indicate that Turkey is playing a central role as a hub for international drug trafficking from Latin America.

But cocaine is not the only illicit business of Turkish criminal networks. In March 2023, Guatemalan authorities seized 480 barrels of chemicals that tested positive for fentanyl in containers aboard a Turkish-flagged ship at the Puerto Barrios Railway Terminal in the department of Izabal. The containers, which originated in Turkey, were destined for Guatemala, transiting through France and Colombia.

According to Mahmut Cengiz, an associate professor at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Washington, this incident marks the pinnacle of the rise of Turkish criminal groups in Latin America.

In his report, Turkey creates new routes for Latin American cocaine destined for Europerecently published in the Small War Diaryan American online magazine that focuses on intrastate conflicts, Cengiz exposes the increasingly central role of Turkish criminal gangs in Latin America, both in the transport of cocaine to Europe and in the importation of fentanyl and chemical experts to Latin America.

With increased scrutiny from U.S. and European authorities, Mexican cartels have sought safer routes, further increasing Turkey’s role as a transit point for cocaine bound for Europe. “Investments by Turkish companies in Latin America, operating ports such as Puerto Bolivar in Ecuador and Paita in Peru through (Turkish company) Yilport Holding, have coincided with the increase in cocaine shipments to Turkey,” Cengiz said. Dialogue. The 1,300 kg of cocaine seized in 2021 came from Puerto Bolivar. In 2023, authorities in Callao, Peru, seized 2.3 tons of cocaine hidden in the middle of a shipment of tiles destined for Turkey.

Corrupt Turkish businessmen trading cocaine and gold

According to Cengiz, those investing in these Latin American ports are corrupt Turkish businessmen. “These are businessmen who are increasingly involved in cocaine trafficking and who have also set up illegal gold trading networks with Venezuela,” Cengiz said. Dialogue.

Numerous companies have been set up in Turkey to trade gold, such as Mulberry Proje Yatirim, which was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in 2019 for facilitating payments as part of a “bribery network for the sale of (Venezuelan) gold to Turkey,” gold that then-US Undersecretary Marshall Billingslea described as “blood gold” because of the violence and blood shed to extract it.

Corrupt Turkish politicians and officials

In addition to corrupt businessmen, politicians and bureaucrats are also part of these Turkish criminal networks. “Sedat Peker, a Turkish ‘kingpin’ who is also mentioned in the US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2022, claimed in a video that the son of then-Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was involved in a seizure of 4.9 tons of cocaine in Venezuela from Colombia,” Cengiz said.

In recent years, members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel have also developed ties with the Grey Wolves, a Turkish far-right paramilitary group of the Nationalist Movement Party. “Videos have been posted on social networks by some members of the Turkish paramilitary group in which they pay tribute to the cartel and its leader Ismael Zambada Garcia, alias El Mayo,” Cengiz said. Members of the Grey Wolves were also involved in several seizures of cocaine from Latin America in the Turkish port city of Mersin.

Number of arrests of Turkish human traffickers in Latin America increases

In Latin America, the number of arrests of Turkish drug traffickers has increased. In Brazil, 1.3 tons of cocaine were seized in a Turkish private plane in 2021. The pilot was imprisoned in Brazil and after his release was arrested again in Turkey, together with the president of the private airline, Şehmuz Özkan, who was suspected of collaborating with a Turkish businessman, partner of former Brazilian army major Sérgio Roberto de Carvalho, nicknamed the Brazilian Escobar. Also in 2021, another Turkish drug trafficker was arrested in Peru with 100 kg of cocaine.

The most recent arrest took place in June 2023 on the coast of São Paulo state, Brazil. Authorities arrested a Turkish citizen with a document in the name of Garip Üç, the brother of Eray Üç, who escaped from a Paraguayan prison in 2017. Eray Üç had been arrested for being part of the international network of Lebanese drug trafficker Ali Issa Chamas, who had ties to Hezbollah, who had previously been imprisoned for drug trafficking in the United States. Months later, Brazilian police discovered that the detainee was in fact Eray Üç, who was using his brother’s identity. At the time of his arrest, he was working as a chemist in a drug lab for Brazil’s main criminal group, the First Capital Command (PCC).

The danger of new alliances of Turkish criminal networks

The Eray Üç case shows that Turkish criminal networks — which dominate the heroin trade in Europe and smuggle methamphetamine with Iranian groups along the Balkan route — are also creating new alliances in Latin America. Although they have not yet reached the penetration capacity of the Albanian mafia in the region, their rapid expansion is worrying.

In addition to recent ties with Brazil’s PCC, Turkish criminal groups maintain relations with Iran’s proxy terrorist organization Hezbollah, which finances itself in the region through illegal activities. In 2017, in addition to Eray Üç, another Turkish citizen, Munir Özturk, was arrested in Paraguay. According to the Argentine news site InformationDuring the searches of the homes of both Turks, several Iranian religious books were found, while Eray Üç’s passport stamps indicated travel to Tehran. The identity card of another Turkish citizen, Sehmus Soytas, was also found. Soytas had been arrested in 2001 on charges of trafficking heroin to Iran. In addition, in 2018, authorities uncovered a drug trafficking network in Venezuela led by Venezuelan naturalized Turk Ozer Murat, who also sent cocaine to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Added to this is the increasingly close relationship with the Sinaloa cartel in Europe, which transports cocaine to and through Turkey. The collaboration with Mexican criminals began in early 2010, when the cartel hired Turkish chemists to produce drugs.

Now with fentanyl, the scenario could get even worse. In addition to the ties to criminal groups in the region, the alliance with the Sinaloa cartel threatens to expand across Latin America with devastating impacts on security and democracy throughout the hemisphere.