The photograph dates from November 18, 2023. It shows a man on his knees, his hands cuffed behind his back, flanked by two police officers, hooded men posing beside him in a luxurious Istanbul lounge. The prisoner's name is Nenad Petrak – or rather Nenat Çelik, ever since that day in December 2022 when he acquired Turkish citizenship through the purchase of a $250,000 apartment, the minimum investment required in real estate at the time, according to Turkey's naturalization law.

With his new nationality, a new letter in his first name and a Turkish surname, he lived a comfortable life on the banks of the Bosphorus for almost a year. Considered one of Croatia's drug lords, Petrak imported cocaine from South America to Europe. According to police sources, he earned more than €27 million per month in 2020.

His henchmen had the particularity of being former boxers – he himself owned a boxing gym in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. In fact, the man had long been wanted by Croatia and Germany for violence and attempted murder, before Interpol finally issued a red notice for him. The Croatian mobster's arrest was the result of a Europol-backed operation involving Croatian and German judicial authorities.

So, when Turkish officials released images of his arrest, several media outlets questioned how such a criminal figure could so easily have settled in the country and obtained valid Turkish documentation despite the prerequisites of a clean criminal record, facial recognition and fingerprint registration, all necessary for a naturalization application. There have been allegations that the suspect enjoyed protection in high places, but no investigation has yet been opened into any possible complicity. Furthermore, his Turkish nationality de facto rules out any possibility of extradition.

Since then, the media has reported almost daily on spectacular seizures and police operations, revealing the extent to which the country has become a sanctuary for drug barons from all over the world. The Australian-based Comanchero criminal group, suspected of drug trafficking and money laundering, suffered a serious setback with the capture, in Istanbul, of Maximilian Rivkin, a Swedish national of Serbian origin, and Hakan Ayik, a Turkish-Australian binational. Rivkin had acquired Turkish nationality by buying two apartments from Ayik. Christijan Palic, head of the so-called Western Balkan Wing drug cartel, was locked up after a special forces operation in the Besiktas neighborhood of Istanbul.

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