Turkey seeks to bust vast meat smuggling racket: minister

The Turkish authorities have launched a major operation aimed at crushing a suspected gang that illegally brought in over 1,000 tonnes of beef from Syria, the customs minister said, describing the haul as Turkey's biggest ever smuggling case.
Acting on a tip-off, investigators last week carried out raids on five storage spaces in the southern city of Mersin, where 1,044 tonnes of smuggled red meat had been stored, Turkish media quoted Customs Minister Nurettin Canikli as saying.
The meat entered Turkey by land from the Cilvegozu crossing in the Hatay region on the Syrian border and was to be sold on the Turkish market without duty being paid, he said.

The consignment had been marked for European export. But while the red meat was stashed away by the smugglers, a fake consignment was sent on in its place into Europe, he said.
The unnamed perpetrators instead smuggled tonnes of falsely-labelled products into Europe which were a mixture of chicken meat and bones.
"This is the biggest smuggling case of goods we've ever come across in Turkey to date," Canikli was quoted as saying by the website of the Hurriyet daily.

The ring has generated an estimated USD 12 million.
Police temporarily detained 11 people, including the former head of the customs office in Mersin as well as customs and cargo clearance officers.

Canikli said an investigation has been launched to smash the ring. The violators would face up to seven years in jail if found guilty.
There were no further details on the original provenance of the meat, the identity of the smugglers, or if the crime was linked to Syria's civil conflict.
According to a 2013 report from Agricultural Association of Turkey, around 30 percent of the meat consumed in the country is illegally smuggled.
A shortage of domestically produced meat has led to imports, and some have sought to avoid high duties through smuggling.
Officials have on occasion blamed much of the meat smuggling on the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency for the past 30 years for Kurdish self-rule.