Alexandra Abello Colak
Research Fellow, Latin American and Caribbean Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science
Independent Expert
Hakan graduated from the Statistics Department of the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, followed by a Master’s degree in remote sensing. After this, he worked for the Turkish Government’s Statistics Department for eight years. Hakan participated in several projects on remote sensing, population census, information management systems, and data analysis.
At end of 2001, Hakan began working for the United National Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the American Vietnam Veterans, and the Turkish Red Crescent as consultant on remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS). He continued his services for 13 years at UNODC. During his services at UNODC, he worked in Afghanistan, Central Asian Countries, Pakistan, Myanmar, Lao and Morocco.
Hakan designed and implemented Opium Poppy Survey Projects in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Lao and Morocco by using Remote Sensing, Statistics and GIS techniques. He also developed capacity in these countries by training government officials.
Later on, he developed a research project about global Afghan Opiate Trafficking. The objective of the programmes are to examine a) the size and flow of opiate trafficking in the world, b) the links between terrorism and organized crime, and c) the links between corruption and money laundering. First of the Afghan Opiate Trade programme, “Addiction, Crime and Insurgency” was released in November 2009. This report took a lot of attention from member states with the ground breaking findings on heroin trafficking worldwide. Later on, he prepared several other research reports to understand the drivers of opiate trafficking through, Balkan, Southern and Northern Routes at global level.