Two seizures in the past 10 days by customs officers have revealed a novel way drug smugglers are attempting to evade authorities. A total of 17 kilograms (37.48 pounds) of cocaine stored in bottles in liquid form were confiscated in operations at Istanbul Airport, authorities announced Friday.
The drugs had a street value of TL 13.8 million ($1.7 million) in the operations that targeted two suspects arriving from Brazil. The first suspect arrived from Sao Paolo. Following an X-ray of the suspect's bag and a sniffer dog search, officials analyzed the liquid in the alcohol bottles in the suspect's luggage. Lab analysis showed that the liquid was in fact cocaine, 8 kilograms in total. Another passenger arriving from Sao Paolo was also screened in the second operation, and 9 kilograms of liquid cocaine in four bottles were found in the man's luggage. The two suspects were remanded into custody.
Turkey is a popular route for drug smugglers traveling between Asia and Europe as well as itself being a target. The Interior Ministry announced on Friday that 15,290 counter-narcotics operations had been carried out between October and November and 1,495 out of 21,240 suspects were arrested in the operations. Authorities have seized more than 5 tons of cannabis, 1.4 tons of heroin, 25 kilograms of cocaine and more than 695,000 captagon pills in operations across the country in the past two months.
In August, customs officers discovered 540 kilograms of cocaine inside a shipping container that arrived from Brazil in what the customs directorate have referred to as their single largest drug seizure. The drugs were found divvied into 500 small packs hidden in the container at a port in the northwestern province of Kocaeli. The operation was similar to another bust in August 2018 at the same port. In the operation, authorities seized 800 kilograms of cocaine aboard a cargo ship, the largest drug seizure in a single operation at the time. Again, cocaine was found hidden inside packs of ferrosilicon, an alloy used for deoxidizing steel, in electric and chemical industries.
In June, Turkish authorities shared details of what they dubbed the largest narcotics operation in the history of modern Turkey in which dozens of suspects were arrested. "Operation Swamp" delivered a heavy blow to a network of suspects across nine countries, including Brazil.
