Arms Trafficking Thrives in Türkiye, Bulgaria, and Greece
When a gun ends up in the hands of a street gang in France or a criminal network in Berlin, few people ask: where did this weapon come from? It’s usually just a footnote in the media or a case number in a police report. But it’s precisely this “where from” that is the focus of a new report published in June 2025 by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). The study traces the route of firearms through three key countries: Türkiye, Bulgaria, and Greece. A path that isn’t fiction—but European reality, with consequences that also affect Macedonia.
In Türkiye, the numbers sound absurd, but they’re real. An estimated 36 million firearms are in civilian hands, most of them unregistered. The Turkish arms industry produces massive quantities of gas pistols designed for self-defense or signaling but easily modified into deadly weapons. These pistols are exported legally to Bulgaria, where the story continues.
Bulgaria is not just a transit corridor. It’s a transformer. A country that’s both an EU member and a processing hub where the weapons are given new roles. Some are modified, others repurposed, but most importantly, some vanish from official channels and reappear in the EU’s criminal underworld. Bulgaria also has its own legacy arms industry one of the oldest in the region with experience, factories, and networks. Some of those networks are official. Others are not.
Greece is a different story. It’s a place where weapons don’t just pass through they stay. In Athens and Thessaloniki, police have been battling illegal armed groups, organized crime, and political extremism for years. There, weapons are not “foreign.” They’re familiar. Data shows that over half of the firearms in Greece are unregistered, a sign of how normalized illegal possession has become. But a new trend is emerging: 3D-printed weapons. These don’t cross borders. They arrive via the Internet. And they’re ending up in the hands of young people.
This study clearly shows that arms trafficking between Türkiye, Bulgaria, and Greece is not a set of isolated incidents but a systemic network that threatens Europe’s security architecture. And Macedonia, with its geography and institutional weaknesses, cannot afford to remain a passive observer. “If it doesn’t engage in a coordinated regional response, Macedonia risks becoming the weak link in a transnational chain of instability,” says the author, Aleksandar Srbinovski of GI-TOC.
So the obvious question is: where does Macedonia fit into this network?
It’s not in the headlines. It’s not in the data tables. But it’s on the map. Surrounded by all these countries, Macedonia has vulnerable border crossings, political instability, and overstretched resources. If weapons can move through Bulgaria and enter Greece, what’s stopping them from passing through Macedonia? Very little. Possibly nothing.
Several weapons seizures in Macedonia over the past two years suggest this route is not theoretical. Most confiscated firearms have no official origin. Police announce operations, but without regional intelligence sharing, joint analysis, and operational platforms—this is a fight in the dark. Macedonia does not have the capacity to face a regional network alone. And the regional network isn’t waiting.
Meanwhile, the European Union sees these risks but still hesitates to act decisively. Some of the weapons moving from Türkiye through the Balkans end up in Paris, The Hague, or Munich. This is no longer a “regional” issue. It’s a security breach in the Schengen zone. If the EU doesn’t view Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Türkiye as one logistical unit, it may be shocked when that unit implodes.
This report isn’t an alarm bell just for Macedonia. It’s a warning for Europe.
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