Customs teams screen passengers, luggage and cargo for drugs at Istanbul’s two airports.
Turkish customs enforcement teams have seized 8 tons and 875 kilograms of narcotics and synthetic drugs in 253 separate incidents at Istanbul’s two international airports since the beginning of 2026, according to officials.
The teams conduct continuous inspections of passengers, luggage and cargo at Istanbul Airport and Sabiha Gökçen Airport, two major international aviation hubs.
Nurhak Demirtaş, head of the customs enforcement unit at Istanbul Airport, said that hundreds of people had been detained and subsequently arrested in connection with the operations.
“Smugglers can be very creative in their attempts to traffic drugs and commercial goods. As they develop new methods, we continue working to expose them,” Demirtaş said.
Smugglers conceal narcotics in suitcase linings, luggage bases, commercial goods and other products. Some couriers also swallow packages containing drugs to transport them through security checks.
Customs teams use intelligence gathering and risk analysis to identify suspicious passengers and shipments, focusing particularly on routes considered high-risk for international drug trafficking. Inspections are supported by X-ray scanners, narcotics detection dogs and specialized chemical identification devices.
One such device can recognise approximately 20,000 chemicals and provide preliminary identification of a substance without requiring laboratory analysis, helping officials obtain results more quickly.
Demirtaş said speed was essential at Istanbul Airport, where thousands of passengers and hundreds of thousands of cargo shipments pass through daily.
He added that the operations not only disrupt drug trafficking networks but also serve as a deterrent against future smuggling attempts.
