Well-Guarded Secrets
Turkey's involvement in nuclear black-market, illegal weapon trafficking, narcotics, the Islamization of Central Asia, and illegal activities within the US Government are also very well-guarded secrets.
Turkey’s Lead Role in Afghan Heroin Trade is One of the Best Kept Stories of the Wars on Terror & Drugs
According to the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs' 2006 Report:
1) Turkey is a major transit route for Southwest Asian opiates to Europe, and serves as a base and refining center for major narcotics traffickers and brokers....
2) Turkey is also a base of operations for international narcotics traffickers and associates trafficking in opium, morphine base, heroin, precursor chemicals and other drugs. The majority of these opiates originate in Afghanistan, and are ultimately trafficked to Western Europe.
3) Turkey remains a major route, refining center and storage, production and staging area, for the flow of heroin to Europe. Turkish-based traffickers and brokers operate in conjunction with narcotics smugglers, laboratory operators, and money launderers in and outside Turkey. They finance and control the smuggling of opiates to and from Turkey. Afghanistan is the source of most of the opiates reaching Turkey.
3) Opiates and hashish also are smuggled to Turkey overland from Afghanistan via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2 ... /62111.htm