The Turkish mafia dominates the world's heroin trade. Customs officers estimate they supply 80% of the 'smack' that reaches Britain. Yet they have remained a mysterious and deadly group, little understood. In this landmark book, the authors trace the intriguing history of the babas, or godfathers, and reveal for the first time the historic conclave in September 1980 when the babas carved up Europe between them and changed the face of the international drug trade. Today, the babas have moved into the ecstasy trade and people smuggling. This is their untold story.

Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey explores the history of organized crime in Turkey and the roles which gangs and gangsters have played in the making of the Turkish state and Turkish politics. Turkey's underworld, which has been at the heart of several devastating scandals over the last several decades, is strongly tied to the country's long history of opium production and heroin trafficking. As an industry at the center of the Ottoman Empire's long transition into the modern Turkish Republic, as important as the silk road had been in earlier centuries, the modern rise of the opium and heroin trade helped to solidify and complicate long-standing relationships between state officials and criminal syndicates. Such relationships produced not only ongoing patterns of corruption, but helped fuel and enable repeated acts of state violence. Drawing upon new archival sources from the United States and Turkey, including declassified documents from the Prime Minister's Archives of the Republic of Turkey and the Central Intelligence Agency, Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey provides a critical window into how a handful of criminal syndicates played supporting roles in the making of national security politics in the contemporary Turkey. The rise of the "Turkish mafia", from its origins in the late Ottoman period to its role in the "deep state" revealed by the so-called Susurluk and Ergenekon scandals, is a story that mirrors troubling elements in the republic's establishment and emphasizes the transnational and comparative significance of narcotics and gangs in the country's past.

Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey explores the history of organized crime in Turkey and the roles which gangs and gangsters have played in the making of the Turkish state and Turkish politics. Turkey's underworld, which has been at the heart of several devastating scandals over the last several decades, is strongly tied to the country's long history of opium production and heroin trafficking. As an industry at the centre of the Ottoman Empire's long transition into the modern Turkish Republic, as important as the silk road had been in earlier centuries, the modern rise of the opium and heroin trade helped to solidify and complicate long-standing relationships between state officials and criminal syndicates. Such relationships produced not only ongoing patterns of corruption, but helped fuel and enable repeated acts of state violence. Drawing upon new archival sources from the United States and Turkey, including declassified documents from the Prime Minister's Archives of the Republic of Turkey and the Central Intelligence Agency, Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey provides a critical window into how a handful of criminal syndicates played supporting roles in the making of national security politics in the contemporary Turkey. The rise of the 'Turkish mafia', from its origins in the late Ottoman period to its role in the 'deep state' revealed by the so-called Susurluk and Ergenekon scandals, is a story that mirrors troubling elements in the republic's establishment and emphasizes the transnational and comparative significance of narcotics and gangs in the country's past.

This volume represents the first attempt to systematically compare organised crime concepts, as well as historical and contemporary patterns and control policies in thirteen European countries. These include seven ‘old’ EU Member States, two ‘new’ members, a candidate country, and three non-EU countries. Based on a standardised research protocol, thirty-three experts from different legal and social disciplines provide insight through detailed country reports. On this basis, the editors compare organised crime patterns and policies in Europe and assess EU initiatives against organised crime.

Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ

Despite strenuous efforts from local, national, and international law enforcement, organized crime continues to thrive and prosper—even centuries-old crime outfits are surviving the global forces of mass migration and multinational business and finance. From traditional gangland enterprises such as narcotics, gambling, and prostitution, the world’s mafias have moved into new sources of illegal income, including high-tech arms smuggling, money laundering, and identity fraud. Traditional Crime in the Modern World tracks these organizations—the Italian and Mexican mafias, Columbian drug cartels, Chinese triads, and others—across five continents as they adapt to change, and assesses their prospects in the short and long term. World events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 terror attacks are discussed in the context of contributing to emerging markets for illicit goods and services, and to evolving partnerships among criminal entities. This timely volume: • Provides a comprehensive overview of how mafia-like structures function today. • Analyzes in depth national crime situations with global implications. • Examines the migration of organized crime groups and their operations in their new countries. • Gauges the influence of digital and other technologies on organized crime. • Where applicable, notes the links between organized crime and national political institutions. • Describes the impact of the global financial crisis on crime organizations. Concise, compelling, and deeply documented, Traditional Crime in the Modern World is an eye-opening resource for researchers in Criminology and Criminal Justice, particularly with an interest in organized crime and trafficking, as well as related topics of Demography, Political Science, and International Relations.

In the current processes of political, economic and cultural changes serious cross-border forms of organized crime receive unprecedented attention as spectacular global media events, as 'threats' of all sorts, and as priority targets of criminal policy and political agendas. Most books on 'global organized crime' focus on one particular region, topic or event, and are written from one specific theoretical and disciplinary framework. The renowned scholars who have contributed to this volume present up-to-date expertise on regions as distant and different as Russia, Colombia, the Netherlands, Israel, Peru and Britain. They tackle phenomena such as international drug trafficking, alien and women smuggling, terrorism, East European organized crime and financial crimes. They show not only how these issues are interrelated, but also the way in which they interact with social, economic and political legitimate structures. The contributors critically question the policies and strategies currently pursued. They explore different theoretical arguments from the perspective of their own disciplines, which include economics, criminology, political science and anthropology.

This book examines the transnational expansion of the illicit economy in Turkey and the unintended consequences of corruption scandals at the highest levels of the Turkish government that have resulted in the purging of important law enforcement and intelligence entities formerly responsible for countering terrorism and organized crime threats.

The twenty-five essays accompany, illustrate and underpin the conceptual framework elaborated in Post-Communist Mafia State, published in conjunction with this volume. Leading specialists analyze the manifestations of the current political regime in Hungary from twenty-five angles. Topics discussed include the ideology, constitutional issues, social policy, the judiciary, foreign relations, nationalism, media, memory politics, corruption, civil society, education, culture and so on. Beyond the basic features of the economy the domains of taxation, banking system, energy policies and the agriculture are treated in dedicated studies. The essays are based on detailed empirical investigation about conditions in today?s Hungary. They nevertheless contribute to the exploration of the characteristic features of post-communist authoritarian regimes, shared by an increasing number of countries in Europe and Central Asia.ÿ Joint publication with Noran Libro, Budapestÿ ÿ