Iranian methamphetamine and Turkey: an emerging transnational threat

Traditionally, Turkish security officials were engaged with state-level threats from Iran. Their primary concerns were export of revolutionary ideology, sponsorship of terrorism, proliferation of nuclear weapons and energy blackmail. In the recent years, however, the nature of the threat has changed and diversified. Non-state actors, mainly transnational crime syndicates, have begun to pose a significant threat to both Turkey and Iran. Iranian drug networks (IDNs) have become the primary actors in heroin and methamphetamine trafficking through Turkey. The IDN threat transcends the jurisdictions of the two states and casts a debilitating impact on the Asia-Pacific countries. Despite a plethora of enacted initiatives, high profits sustain large-scale trans-regional methamphetamine trafficking. Retail prices in the Asia-Pacific markets approach hundred-fold profits over the production costs of methamphetamine in Iran. In this context, Turkish law-enforcement agencies report increasing amounts of methamphetamine seizures since 2009. The upsurge in seizure quantities is coupled with an escalation of cases and arrests. This paper investigates dimensions of the methamphetamine threat in Turkey, profiles of the actors, shipment routes, and modus operandi of the trafficking syndicates. It provides insight into a non-traditional non-state threat coming out of Iran. The inferences are based on an analysis of 183 methamphetamine case files and 81 provincial questionnaires of the Department of Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime (KOM).     

Upon a failure to equal entry and exit wounds: a possible case of tandem bullets in view of the literature

Forensic medicine specialists take account of the projectiles remaining in the body when determining whether there are an equal number of entry and exit wounds. The absence of projectiles should suggest blank cartridges, a single exit wound despite several firings and bullet embolization, whereas the presence of more projectiles than expected may indicate tandem projectiles and multiple projectiles entering through the same hole. Radiological examination of the whole body, follow-up of the bullet trajectories, examination of the clothes, and examination of the gun and projectiles play a key role in solving difficult cases. We review such situations based on a case of tandem bullets. Two 7.65-mm bullets created lethal wounds entering through a 32-year-old victim's neck followed the same trajectory to a certain point and diverted. We discussed the possibilities in cases that show inequalities between entry and exit wounds, in light of relevant literature.     

Anatomy of a dark network: the case of the Turkish Ergenekon terrorist organization

Dark networks refer to organizations that are covert and illegal in nature. Terrorist networks, organized crime groups, arms smugglers, and conspiracy organizations can all be classified as dark networks. This paper analyzes Turkey??s Ergenekon Terrorist Organization (ETO) which is a political conspiracy network that has played a significant role in the terrorist activities within the country in the last few decades. It has features of organized crime enterprises, terrorist organizations, and Gladio type clandestine armies, but it exceeds the scope of these three. This study examines the structure of the ETO using network analysis tools and court documents as the data source. Findings indicate that the network has a concentrated structure which consists of a core and periphery group of actors. The core group has a strong connectedness with each other while the density of the relationship gets lower in the periphery group. Peripheral actors are separated into subgroups which are necessary for operational purposes and also prevalent in the literature of dark networks. An efficiency-security tradeoff, which is also widely discussed in the literature, does not take place in the ETO network because the political and legal conditions of the country allow members of the network to act comfortably as opposed to being under the threat of counter-terrorism or law enforcement efforts.