Kathimerini
By Stavros Tzimas

THESSALONIKI- Turkish gangs control the heroin distribution network throughout Europe, but in recent years they have come under pressure from Albanian gangs that are expanding their activities.

Police officers from southeastern European countries who took part in a recent meeting on organized crime in the region agreed that Turkish gangs, which control 80 percent of the flow of heroin into Europe, are now operating in ways that fall under the definition of organized crime.

Respectable citizens

Gang members often pass themselves off as respectable citizens involved in philanthropic activities, but when their interests are at stake, they turn into ruthless criminals.
Turkish drug barons adopt the guise of businessmen, usually in the shipping or building sectors.

They sponsor sporting clubs, build houses for people who have been made homeless as a a result of earthquakes, make donations to charity and develop close relations with services and foundations.

Within the gangs, however, hierarchy and rules are strictly adhered to. According to speakers at the meeting, any gang members who cooperate with the police are murdered.

The gangs communicate in code and decisions are always passed on by word of mouth.

Foreign receivers and distributors receive verbal instructions about business plans; for this purpose they are invited to Turkey, where they are presented as investors or representatives of philanthropic organizations.

If their plans go awry and large amounts of drugs are confiscated in Turkey or elsewhere, the cover-up method changes and other seemingly legal firms or people are used to transport the goods.
The drug trade is big business in Turkey, which is said to be the major transit point for heroin in Europe.

Turkish gangs also control the movement of heroin to other countries and collaborate with gangs from those places.

Bulgaria and Romania are the main storage centers for heroin, which is then sent via the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Kosovo to Albania, and from there to Italy and other Western European countries.

The route varies according to the political situation, and since the crises in Macedonia and Kosovo, Greece has been used as an alternative route for trucks that carry drugs across the Greek-Bulgarian border to southwestern ports and on to Italy.

Turkish gangs guard their turf jealously, according to an experienced officer at the meeting, who said they had shot aspiring competitors in cold blood in Germany and Switzerland.

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