convergence

Chapter 6
The Geography of Badness: Mapping
the Hubs of the Illicit Global Economy
Patrick Radden Keefe
S uppose, for a moment, that you have come into possession of a small quantity of weapons-grade
uranium. Perhaps you filched it from one of the casually-guarded facilities scattered
across the former Soviet Union. You are desperate, or just unscrupulous, so you decide
to take this precious bit of lethal contraband and sell it on the open market. Once you have
devised a method for transporting the material without tipping off the authorities or exposing
yourself to incapacitating levels of radiation, you will find yourself confronted with a further
predicament: where do you transport it to? You are told that there is robust international demand
for fissile material and that well-financed terrorist groups, select state governments, and
a multitude of shady middlemen and brokers are all seeking precisely the sort of product you
have to sell. But where are they? How do you connect with them? In the global black market
for the raw ingredients of a nuclear bomb, where do buyers and sellers meet?
The answer, as often as not, is Turkey. Situated at the crossroads of Europe and Asia,
with ready access both to the former Soviet Union and to the Middle East, Turkey has been
a vital conduit of global trade, licit and otherwise, for centuries. “Turkey is the world’s grand
bazaar,” William Langewiesche remarks, “[and] it is hardly surprising that in recent years people
have gone there looking to sell their nuclear goods.” 1 With its advantageous location, official
corruption, weak penal code, and porous frontiers, the country offers an appealing logistical
way station for smugglers of various stripes. By some accounts, as much as 75 percent of the
narcotics entering Western Europe either originates in or transits through Turkey. 2 So it
should come as no surprise that in the murky underworld of clandestine nuclear transactions,
Turkey has emerged as perhaps the dominant venue of exchange. There were over a hundred
reported incidents of nuclear smuggling in the country during the first decade after the Cold
War alone 3 (though in many instances, the material exchanged did not ultimately turn out to be
dangerous). “It is a well-known rumor,” Georgia’s chief nuclear investigator Archil Pavlenishvili
observes, “that you can sell anything in Turkey.” 4
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