More than 1,150 people were arrested in the Turkish capital of Ankara during a sustained anti-drug operation conducted in November, as police seized over 100 pounds of narcotics, state media reported on Tuesday.
Police sources stated that 171 of those arrested were remanded in custody, as law enforcement officials seized 1,18,850 opiate pills and 112 pounds of marijuana, the Anadolu news agency reported.
In an additional operation in the central Konya province, two suspects were arrested as police confiscated 5,488 opiate pills from an apartment, the media reported.
In August, Turkish security forces announced that over 100 tonnes of drugs had been seized during operations in the previous year. More than 2,00,000 suspects were arrested as part of 1,45,000 separate anti-drug operations.
Last week, a European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction report claimed that the majority of heroin which enters the European Union passes through Turkey, bound for Greece and Bulgaria. Shipments are commonly stashed in trucks, buses or cars among the legal cargo.