The Border at Kapikule
Trucks are the most popular places to hide drugs because
In 2022, TIR parks opened on both sides of the Kapikule
border, in Bulgaria and in Turkey. Until 2022, truck
drivers who were waiting to enter Bulgaria had to park
their trucks along the E80, and wait to be inspected. This
line of trucks - which was sometimes over 15km long -
was very important to the mafia and to organised crime.
If you had gone to Kapikule before 2022, you would have
seen that the trucks were often parked next to others
from the same company. Drivers were required to park
together, so that they could guard each others' trucks
from the mafia while one of them slept. The wait to cross
the border into Bulgaria often lasted 48 hours or more.
The reason is that the mafia targetted those trucks for
drug smuggling.
When heroin is produced, it is not worth a lot of money.
Each time it is refined, its value increases. When it
crosses the border from Turkey to Bulgaria, it has usually
been fully refined in Turkey and it is worth a lot of
money. Smugglers are aiming for the markets of western
Europe, and they frequently use innocent truck drivers to
carry the heroin for them. Mehmet1, a driver for a major
logistics firm, has had experience with this three times in
his career. The first time, when he crossed the border
from Bulgaria into Romania, sniffer dogs alerted the
police to his truck and trace amounts of heroin were
found in the undercarriage. "The mafia loaded my truck
with heroin while I was waiting at Kapikule," Mehmet
says. "Then, they followed me into Bulgaria and took the
drugs when I stopped to eat or sleep. It's a risk-free way
for them to get drugs across the border: if the police at
Kapikule had found them, I would have gone to jail but
nobody would have caught the drug mafia." Mehmet is
fairly certain that he has carried drugs into Bulgaria two
more times: once, he was alerted when CCTV showed
some people stealing something from his truck at a
Bulgarian restaurant; and another time he noticed that a
car was following his truck. "It may have been more than
three times," he says. "I'm just lucky that I was never
caught. The police would never believe that I was
innocent."
Mehmet might be innocent but many drivers are not. The
Kapikule border is a major transport point for heroin and
the police estimate that 150 kg of drugs pass through it
every day. Another driver who carried drugs says he paid
bribes to not be inspected. However, it is very difficult to
bribe the correct inspector before you arrive at the
border, so drivers have to carry cash and just hope that it
will be accepted. "I lost ten kilos in body weight on one
trip from Lebanon to the Netherlands, through nervous
sweat!" he says.
The police are aware of the drug smuggling and
conferences on Kapikule are organised every year. The
drug smugglers and the police never stop working: when
the police discover a new popular hiding place, the drug
1
Not his real name
smugglers have to find new places to hide the drugs.
of time limitations. It takes 2 hours to search a car, 4
hours to search a bus, and 6-8 hours to search a truck.
Things frequently go wrong. Drivers can be delayed or get
lost, and codes can be misunderstood, which means that
drivers often arrive at the wrong place or the wrong time.
In fact, one police officer commented that organised
crime is difficult to fight because it is so disorganised!
Nevertheless, the police work hard to figure out the signs
of drug smuggling, and they search especially for things
which do not fit into the normal pattern. Making a round
trip without a load is suspicious. A car that has just had
work done on it can have been "prepared" with storage
space; new bolts are a sign of this. A car that has been
freshly sprayed is also suspicious. If the goods don't fit
within the usual route of origin and destination, or if a
truck has an unusual driver, or if there is vague or no
advertising on the truck, the police will take note of it.
They also watch for unusual documents and packaging,
or when a truck and a car with registration numbers from
the same place are driving one after the other for a long
time.
Source: The Turkish Mafia: A History of the Heroin
Godfathers by Frank Bovenkerek & Yücel Yeşilgöz
Look online and answer the questions below:
1. What is the "street price" of a kilogram of heroin in
western Europe?
2. Is Kapikule Turkey's biggest border crossing?
3. What is an example of a punishment for smuggling
drugs from Turkey to the EU?
1. Now complete the summary of the reading with
word(s) in each space.
Kapikule is a/an ______________ when people
research drug smuggling from Turkey to the EU.
_____ study it carefully because heroin
________ into Bulgaria in many _______.
Sometimes, _________ take heroin into
Bulgaria: they might pay money to the guards,
or sometimes they take it without _________. In
the second situation, the criminals follow their
trucks so that they can ________ in Bulgaria.
The guards don't always search trucks because it
________.
The police study ___________ so that they can
find drugs more easily.
Now listen to the T/F quiz and write your
answers to the ten questions.
1. The police think that 15 kg of drugs are taken
into Bulgaria every day.
2. Heroin is refined in Afghanistan, not in Turkey.
3. The example driver called "Mehmet" is in the
mafia.
4. The example driver called "Mehmet" is now in
jail.
5. It takes 6-8 hours for a normal truck to pass
through Kapikule.
6. Truckers had to guard their trucks while they
waited to pass through Kapikule.
7. The article discusses sniffer dogs at Kapikule.
8. It is hard for the police to fight organised crime
because the criminals are often disorganized.
9. If you are driving a new car across the border,
the police will probably want to search it for
drugs.
10. If you are driving a car with new paint across the
border, the police will probably want to search it
for drugs.
11.