Drug manufacture and trafficking

The production and trade of narcotic or stimulant substances is regulated by Article 188 of the Turkish Penal Code. The law punishes possession for personal use separately and less severely.

Penalty

• Manufacture, import or export (TCK 188/1): 20–30 years’ imprisonment and 2,000–20,000 day-fines.
• Selling, offering for sale, supplying, dispatching, transporting, storing, purchasing, accepting or possessing within the country (TCK 188/3): imprisonment of not less than 10 years and 1,000–20,000 day-fines.
• If the substance is supplied or sold to a child, the term of imprisonment may not be less than 15 years.

Aggravating circumstances

• If the substance is heroin, cocaine, morphine, base morphine, a synthetic cannabinoid, a synthetic cathinone, a synthetic opioid, or amphetamine or its derivatives, the penalty is increased by one half (TCK 188/4-a).
• If the sale or distribution takes place in public places, or places open to the public, less than 200 metres from the boundaries of places such as schools, dormitories, hospitals, barracks or places of worship, the penalty is increased by one half (TCK 188/4-b).
• If the offence is committed jointly by three or more people, the penalty is increased by one half; if committed as part of the activities of a criminal organisation, it is doubled (TCK 188/5).

Prosecution and enforcement

• Drug manufacture and trafficking is in the pre-trial detention catalogue (CMK 100/3).
• Children sentenced to imprisonment for this offence may benefit from conditional release after serving two thirds of their sentence in prison (Law No. 5275, Art. 107).

In the data

Most news reports on drugs concern law enforcement operations. These records are available in the institutional API at location level (data access); a drug operation carried out in a place does not by itself indicate the level of crime in that place.