IngentaConnect Back from the Brink: Turkey's Ambivalent Approaches to the Hard D...

Author: Robins, Philip

Source: The Middle East Journal, Volume 62, Number 4, Autumn 2008 , pp. 630-650(21)

Abstract:

This article focuses on the issue of narcotics and Turkey over a 30-year period. Its point of departure is the 1970s, when the opium production crisis in Turkey, and its associated corrosion of relations with the US, had been brought to an end. The article concentrates on the period in the late 1980s/early to mid-1990s, when the hard drugs issue became fused with other security threats like terrorism and state corruption. During this dark period, Turkey's criminal organizations that were trafficking narcotics made significant inroads in alliance-building with parts of the security state. The article ends with the experiences of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Turkish state succeeded in containing the impact of illicit drugs. The article argues that both external but in particular internal factors were important in propelling the Turkish state towards purging itself of criminal elements involved with hard drugs. With respect to the latter, it argues that the need to safeguard the state, rather than the narcotics issue per se, was the key factor driving change.

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Back from the Brink: Turkey's Ambivalent Approaches to the Hard Drugs Issue