Abstract:

Terrorism and organized crime are not a new phenomenon. In the beginning, this nexus was relatively small-scale, temporarily and generally active within the national border. After the end of the Cold War, the increasing number of weak and failed states, improvements within the communication and technological world changed the nature of these relationships. The nexus between terrorism and organized crime groups became large-scale, both at the national and international level. Today terrorism and organized crime groups are an important international challenge. This new reality became more apparent after 9/11 of 2001. The main goal of the organized crime groups is profit-oriented; “business is business.” Terrorism’s goal is generally ideological, but also it needs resources in order to sustain its activities. Illegal activities such as; drug trafficking, drug smuggling, are the lucrative way to gain more profit in short-run. This situation is one of the main reasons for the convergence of both groups. Both groups try to cooperate with each other. They change “know-how”, train, support and protect each other. This relationship created a huge amount of black/grey market profit. As mentioned above, due to some facilitating factors, the nexus between terrorism and organized crime groups is a growing threat to international peace and stability. In the light of tangible examples in different terrorist and organized crime groups, this paper tries to indicate that there is cooperation and relationship between two groups and it develops into a global security threat.

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