Turkey’s interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, has called on police to break the legs of drug dealers, the Ahval news website reported based on a Sputnik story.
“When we see drug dealers in the vicinity of a school – let them condemn me and criticize me for this as much as they like – it is the duty of the police to break those drug dealers’ legs,” he said.
“They can blame me for it,” Soylu told a conference on drugs and security in the capital of Ankara.
If the violence carried a prison sentence, it would still be worth it, he said.
“In 2018 we will break their heads and we will save our nation from this addiction,” Soylu said.
Drug dealers are no different from terrorists and should be treated the same way, Soylu said, according to a Bloomberg report.
He said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) earns $1.5 billion a year from the drug trade and warned that an 87 percent increase in opium production in Afghanistan last year would lead to an increase in smuggling via Turkey.
“We have to act mercilessly,” Soylu said. “Whatever a security officer does to someone they see selling drugs, the responsibility is on me.”