Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi vowed a strict crackdown on organized crime and warned criminals that they should not think they could “get away” by fleeing abroad. Çiftçi told local broadcaster KonTV on Saturday that he would soon visit Germany and Italy to reinforce Türkiye’s efforts to bring back criminals from those countries.
Since taking office in February, Çiftçi has visited neighboring countries. On Thursday, he was in Greece and had previously held talks with officials in Georgia and Bulgaria to strengthen cooperation in fighting transnational crime. Türkiye’s neighbors are often the first destinations for criminals fleeing the country. Some hide in those countries, while others travel farther west illegally.
Çiftçi is at the forefront of Türkiye’s efforts to crack down on “next-generation gangs,” which have proliferated in recent years. Unlike the Turkish mafia of the past, these gangs rely more heavily on minors and teenagers to commit crimes ranging from extortion to murder. They are also active on social media, where they glorify their crimes and seek to recruit more young people.
“As of the end of September, we had carried out 1,741 operations targeting 625 criminal organizations as part of our crackdown on next-generation criminal organizations. The number of operations reached 1,741 because we conducted multiple operations against some of these groups. As a result, we secured the arrest and imprisonment of 8,170 people.
“Next-generation criminal organizations do not operate only in Türkiye. They immediately flee abroad when they find themselves in trouble. In recent months, I visited Bulgaria in connection with this issue. I later traveled to Georgia and met with the Georgian interior minister. I was in Greece on Thursday, where I held separate meetings with Greece’s minister for citizen protection and minister for migration and asylum.
“Our discussions focused entirely on security diplomacy, next-generation criminal organizations and the places abroad where their members flee and hide. They should not think they can escape us by fleeing abroad. No matter which country in the world they flee to, where they hide or what hole they crawl into, the mighty hand of our state will find them wherever they have fled, bring them back to Türkiye and hand them over to justice. They will answer for their actions before the Turkish judiciary,” Çiftçi said.
“In the first nine months of this year, we secured the extradition of 736 people from abroad. These were individuals who had committed crimes in Türkiye, fled abroad and thought they could escape us there. Through our upcoming visits and security diplomacy efforts, we will further increase this number. We will track down every single one of them and bring them back to Türkiye,” he said.
Noting that next-generation criminal organizations commit a wide range of crimes, including drug trafficking, smuggling, offenses involving irregular migrants, fraud and public-order offenses, Çiftçi said: “One of their sources of funding is drug trafficking, which they use to sustain their operations. Their main source of income is the illicit proceeds they obtain from drug trafficking. When we took office, we identified the fight against drugs as our second major area of focus. Drugs are not just a problem for Türkiye today; they are a problem for the entire world because they directly affect our future. These groups generate income from this trade while continuing to poison our youth. We are continuing to fight them as vigorously as possible to cut off their sources of funding.”
Çiftçi noted that 35,819 people had been arrested in 42,377 operations conducted as part of the fight against drugs this year. He said there were 432,000 people in prisons across Türkiye, adding that 36% of them were either convicted of or detained on drug-related charges.
Çiftçi also reported that the operations had resulted in the seizure of 39 tons of narcotics and approximately 104 million synthetic drug pills. Authorities also seized 20.8 million cannabis plants.
