30,000 cannabis plants destroyed in Diyarbakır's UNESCO-listed Hevsel Gardens
Turkish drug enforcement agents and local police raided the Hevsel Gardens in Diyarbakır in a sunrise operation with boats, helicopters and drones, destroying 30,000 cannabis plants at 31 spots. The reports say the crop could have yielded 5.3 tonnes of cannabis worth about two billion lira; no arrests were reported.
Turkish drug enforcement agents and local police raided the Hevsel Gardens in Diyarbakır, in the mainly Kurdish southeast, in a joint sunrise operation with divers and boats backed by helicopters and drones.[1][2]The gardens, a roughly 700-hectare terraced strip between the Diyarbakır fortress and the Tigris recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015, cannot be entered by vehicles, so the growers had hidden the plants in tents and watered them from the river.[1][2]
Officers found thousands of cannabis plants at 31 locations and destroyed 30,000 of them.[1][2]The reports say the crop could have yielded about 5.3 tonnes of cannabis worth roughly two billion Turkish lira, about 51 million dollars.[1][2]
The reports give no date for the raids and name no arrests, and the interior ministry had not commented.[1][2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Turkey's interior ministry said on 28 October 2026 that gendarmerie teams in 32 provinces had destroyed 119,772 cannabis and skunk plants. Of 423 suspects caught, 298 were remanded and 125 were released under judicial control.
Gendarmerie teams destroyed 48,579 cannabis plants at 35 sites across Yenişehir, Eğil and Sur. Türkiye’s Interior Ministry reported that officers seized 36 kilograms of cannabis and estimated that the destroyed crop could have yielded 1.2 tonnes.
Turkey's Interior Ministry said on 21 September 2026 that gendarmerie teams had destroyed 217,608 cannabis and skunk plants on 99 illegal plots in the Lice and Kulp districts of Diyarbakır. The ministry said the crop could have yielded about five tonnes of cannabis powder and that 15 kg of cannabis was also seized. It reported no arrests.
Gendarmerie teams seized 12,389,000 cannabis and skunk plants and 127 kg of cannabis in Lice, Diyarbakır, in an operation announced on 14 June 2025. All 22 suspects caught were remanded in custody by the courts.
Arrested 22Plants destroyed 12,389,000Cannabis 127 kg
