Number of deaths due to drugs declining: Minister

ANKARA

The number of deaths due to drugs in Türkiye has been declining regularly in the last five years, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has said.

“We will not let our kids, youth to fall in this quicksand [of drugs] with our determination in our fight against the drugs,” Soylu said on Twitter on June 25.

The minister uploaded a chart showing the number of deaths due to drugs over the years, saying, “We are going to beat drug addictions together.”

According to the chart, some 941 people overdosed in 2017, 657 in 2018, 341 in 2019 and 314 in 2020.

The chart showed that some 270 people died in 2021.

There is a 71.3 percent decrease in number of deaths from 2017, the minister noted.

Türkiye recently conducted its most extensive anti-drug operations with the participation of some 4,200 police officers in 11 of all 81 provinces, and some drug barons and baronesses were caught.

Soylu announced on June 21 that more than 215 people were nabbed in the simultaneous raids, named “Eradication Operations.”

The Diyarbakır-based operations were held in Istanbul, the northwestern province of Bursa, the southeastern provinces of Batman, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, the eastern provinces of Van, Muş, Bitlis, Erzurum and the Central Anatolian province of Eskişehir.

According to the file, a drug gang was bringing in methamphetamine from Iran to Diyarbakır and was selling the drugs across the country.

The minister said he sees methamphetamine as the “biggest threat for Türkiye” as of today.