Turkish drug squad police officers have seized 11 kilograms of cocaine found in banana containers shipped from Ecuador to Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

The find was made at Turkey's Mersin Port, the provincial directorate of security in Mersin said on July 26. It was not the first such find announced this year. In April, the directorate said that its forces seized 98kg of cocaine in banana crates. On that occasion also, the drugs were said to have come from Ecuador.

In January, the directorate said that its officers found 45kg of cocaine in potato containers. This time the shipment was from Egypt.

Turkey regularly seizes cocaine at Mersin port in banana containers shipped from Ecuador.

Separately, Italian police said on July 21 that they seized five tonnes of cocaine in a ship destined for Turkey.

Analysts assessing the drug trade roughly apply a one-to-10 rule to estimate the actual drug flow based on seizures, with the great majority of drugs making it through to illicit markets. Banana shipments are seen as "a usual suspect" in the cocaine trade. Cheese shipments are also popular with cocaine dispatchers.

Ecuador annually exports around 3mn tonnes of bananas.

Turkish port operator Yilport Holding, a unit of Yildirim Group Holding, bought 50-year port concession rights at Puerto Bolivar in 2016.

According to the Global Report on Cocaine 2023 issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Turkey seized a record three tonnes of cocaine in 2021. UNODC’s conclusion is that Turkey’s role as a cocaine transit country has grown hugely in the past 10 years.

Turkey’s drug-running underground has evolved quickly in recent years. Turkish criminal networks involved in the cocaine trade between the Middle East and Latin America lately merged with fentanyl traffickers, according to an April report published by Homeland Security Today.

The article takes a look at Turkey’s history of drug trafficking, including its role as a bridge between source and destination countries for heroin in the 1970s and 1980s.

Politicians, bureaucrats and criminal groups in Turkey are involved in the cocaine trade, which has flourished under the Erdogan administration’s authoritarian regime, the report suggests. Anti-drug trafficking teams in Turkey were almost entirely purged after corruption scandals in 2013 and a coup attempt in 2016. That is thought to have helped drug trafficking to boom in the country.

A recent seizure of 480 barrels of fentanyl in Guatemala, found in containers of a Turkish-flagged vessel, is said to have highlighted Turkey’s involvement in drug trafficking.

There are reportedly indications that Turkey’s Grey Wolves, a far-right paramilitary organisation affiliated with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the junior partner in Turkey’s ruling coalition, may be involved in cocaine trafficking with links to the Sinaloa Cartel in Latin America.