The US and Turkey cooperate closely against narcotics trafficking. The USG focuses its assistance to the TNP on training and equipment support for intelligence gathering and interdiction operations. The USG is assisting Turkish Customs to improve interdiction at Turkey's main land border crossings with Bulgaria, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Georgia. In 1995 the USG inaugurated a new program to expand Turkey's Customs Service monitoring of shipping in the Marmara area, through which pass most seaborne narcotics and precursor chemicals bound for, from, or through Turkey. The Road Ahead.
Turkey faces an increasing flow of narcotics, as production in Afghanistan burgeons.
Economic and political troubles across the huge swath of land from Pakistan north and west to Turkey encourage steady streams of narcotics flowing via multiple new routes to western markets. Domestic drug abuse is on the rise in Istanbul and is spreading outward, covering the spectrum from the poorest elements, who typically use glue, hashish, and heroin, to the richest elements of the population, who typically use cocaine.