Organised crime is a threat to European citizens, businesses, state institutions as well as the economy as a whole. Criminals easily operate across borders, which creates a need for consistent action at the European level. The EU continuously adapts its response in relation to the growing complexity of the situation. This is also reflected in the development of specialised EU agencies, such as Europol, Eurojust and CEPOL. The EU's action extends from crime prevention to law enforcement and is based on various tools, such as legislative measures harmonising rules concerning offences in relation to a criminal organisation to gathering of reliable crime statistics and the funding of European projects or specialist networks. Modern organised crime requires a multi-disciplinary approach to effectively prevent and counter it.

The EU is supporting Türkiye in this challenging field via a number of projects covering areas on cybercrime, drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, investigation capacity on organised crime, crime analysis and crime prevention, forensics and witness protection. Main stakeholders are the Turkish National Police and the Gendarmerie General Command, with the active participation of other law enforcement agencies and the Ministry of Justice.

Türkiye adopted a new Strategy for Combating Organised Crime (2016-2021) and a related Action Plan (2016-2018), which entered into force in March 2016. The Ministry of Interior's Department for Smuggling, Intelligence and Operations and Information Gathering is coordinating the implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan.