Turkish police have captured a man wanted by Belgium as a leader of one of its biggest cocaine trafficking organisations, taking him into custody in Istanbul in an operation the Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday. The suspect, identified by the ministry only as S.G., is accused of running an international network that moved two tons of cocaine from Colombia to Belgium hidden inside six tons of copper powder, and of supplying the chemicals used to extract the drug at the other end of the journey.
The capture took place in Zeytinburnu, a district on Istanbul's European side, and was carried out by the Istanbul Police Department's Narcotics Crimes Branch and its Intelligence Branch. The ministry said the two branches had been working in coordination on operations aimed at people wanted internationally, and that the joint work led officers to S.G. Photographs released with the announcement show the suspect, his face blurred, kneeling between two masked narcotics officers wearing Istanbul police vests, one of them holding a rifle.
S.G. was being sought by the Belgian judicial authorities through an Interpol diffusion notice — an international alert circulated to police forces — on charges of "drug trafficking and establishing a criminal organization", the ministry said. Turkish investigators had established that he held a leadership position in one of Belgium's major cocaine trafficking organisations. The ministry described him as the head of the organised criminal group behind an international drug trafficking network established in Belgium.
According to the ministry, investigators determined that S.G. and the organisation he built shipped two tons of cocaine concealed in six tons of copper powder from Colombia to Belgium, and that the drugs were then distributed onward from Belgium to other European countries. Hiding cocaine inside industrial cargo is a method designed to defeat port scanners and sniffer dogs: copper powder is dense, heavy and shipped in bulk, so a consignment can pass as ordinary raw material while the drug travels inside it.
The ministry said S.G. earned a substantial amount of money from the shipments and personally kept the network's supply lines alive. He "maintained connections in Colombia", the announcement said, and he procured the chemicals used to separate the cocaine from the material in which it had been absorbed — the technical step that turns a hidden shipment back into sellable drugs once it reaches Europe. In the ministry's account, the same man who organised the loads also controlled the contacts at the source and the chemistry at the destination.
The Interior Ministry closed its announcement by praising the officers who made the arrest: "We congratulate our heroic police officers, our Istanbul Police Department and all those who contributed." No age or nationality was released for the suspect, and his full name has not been made public. Belgian authorities had not issued a public statement on the capture by the time of the announcement.
The arrest is the latest product of a rapidly tightening partnership between Ankara and Brussels against organised crime. Türkiye and Belgium recently signed a "Joint Action Plan" covering the fight against drugs and gangs, and on October 20 Türkiye's foreign, justice and interior ministers travelled to Brussels to meet their Belgian counterparts, pressing for stronger judicial cooperation and concrete steps against criminal groups. Turkish officials say gang figures squeezed by crackdowns at home have made European countries their main refuge, while foreign fugitives wanted elsewhere have treated Türkiye as a hiding place — and Ankara has spent this year publicly hunting both.
The same pattern has repeated across Istanbul in recent days. Istanbul police caught another internationally wanted man, Ömer Güney, on October 21; he had been sought on an Interpol Red Notice since 2014. Days later, Türkiye's justice minister announced that a United States national wanted over an alleged $1 billion cryptocurrency fraud in the U.S. and Finland had also been detained in Istanbul, declaring that Türkiye will not be a safe haven for transnational criminals and wanted suspects. Officials say 714 suspects were brought back from 42 countries this year as the fugitive hunt widened, and Ankara now wants to spread the Belgium-style action plan to other European capitals.
For the neighbourhoods at the end of the pipeline, the stakes are concrete. A two-ton cocaine network does not only move powder; it moves the violence, corruption and addiction that come with Europe's cocaine trade, and every organiser taken off the board is one less supplier feeding it. The Colombia-to-Europe route S.G. is accused of running is part of the same global supply system that fills markets across the Atlantic world, which is why police forces on three continents now share watchlists, alerts and operations like the one that ended in Zeytinburnu.
What happens next has not been set out in detail by either government. The ministry said the suspect was captured and taken into custody; under the normal process for an internationally wanted person caught in Türkiye, he will go through the Turkish courts while Belgium's extradition request is handled through official channels, a route both countries have been using under their new cooperation plan. Whether S.G. fights extradition, how long the process takes, and what Belgian prosecutors lay out against him in court remain open questions. What is already established, on the Turkish government's own account, is the scale of the enterprise he is accused of leading: two tons of cocaine, six tons of copper powder, one supply line from Colombia into the heart of Europe — and a fugitive run that ended on the floor of an Istanbul address, between two masked officers of the narcotics branch.
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