The PKK has to have financial sources as it needs for its terror campaign and for its written, verbal, sounded and visualized propaganda activities, and for its militants, arms, ammunition, printing houses, television studios, transmission facilities, and secret or open bureaus in many countries. In parallel with its terrorist nature, PKK’s financial capability is depended on illegal activities. In most of the studies on the PKK, the basic methods to finance the PKK are explained as drug smuggling, extortion and robbery.134 Among the financial sources, fund-raising, membership donations, aid from church organizations and financial support provided by local administrations to PKK’s front associations and extortion of asylum seekers are also referred.135
Annual budget of the PKK was estimated as 86 million US Dollars. In a report by the British National Service of Criminal Intelligence, it is stated that the PKK extorted 2.5 million pounds from immigrants and businessmen in 1993. The same report also reveals that PKK’s income in 1993 from drug smuggling in Europe was 56 million DM.136 It is reported that in the first half of 1994 two-thirds of the heroin seized by German authorities were through the channels of Turks of Kurdish descent.137 In 1992, 23 of the 41 operations for narcotics worldwide, smugglers captured were said to be linked to the PKK.138 The Turkish Security Department’s Smuggling and Organized Crime Division told that since 1984 the security forces had conducted 129 operations against narcotic smugglers who had direct involvement with the PKK. They have seized more than two tons of heroin, 13 tons of hashish, four tons of morphine and 22 tons of acetic anhydrite which is used to produce heroin. The Turkish authorities also said: "The PKK receives commissions from the other traffickers and helps them to smuggle narcotics to European countries through Turkey."139
It is expressed that there are two places of origin for the drugs connected to the PKK.140 Narcotics prepared in laboratories in the Syrian controlled Bekaa Valley of Lebanon are transferred through the Greek portion of Cyprus to Italy, Spain, Germany and other European countries or through smuggling into Turkey from the southeastern border and into former Eastern bloc countries en route to Western Europe. A senior member of Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), Sami Abderrahman said that the PKK sought control on both sides of the Turkish-Northern Iraqi border in order to control drugs trading.141
PKK tries to launder the money obtained from drug smuggling by transferring it from Germany to Turkey. It is reported that Kurdish drug dealers in Germany annually transfer an amount of more than 100 million DM to Turkey.142
According to the statement by Rolph Tophoven, the Director of the Terrorism Research Forum in Germany, 69 of 100 incidents of extortion in Germany in 1994 are definitely proved to be in connection with the PKK.143 In Southeastern Turkey in the years of 1991 and 1992 when PKK terrorism was rampant, during the incidents of road blockades the travelers who refused to give their money were killed immediately by the PKK terrorists.144 There are also press reports which indicate PKK’s involvement in counterfeiting.145
The percentage of acceptance of Kurdish asylum-seekers in Europe range from 14 to 21 while the same figure for asylum-seekers from other countries remains around 1 or 2%.146 Such a high rate of acceptance based on ethnicity is exploited by the PKK which frequently commits fraudulence on asylum, consequently obtaining a considerable amount of income. Through the forgery on visas and passports 4,000- 4,500 DM are obtained for each case.147 In the crimes of the fraud on asylum, trading workers illegally and forgery, it is the terrorist organization, PKK, which controls the market particularly in Germany.148
The income received with those methods are spent to supply German, Chinese and Russian made arms149 and to finance MED TV, the propaganda channel of the PKK.150
134 İsmet İmset, PKK: Ayrılıkçı Şiddetin 20 Yılı (1973-1992) [The PKK: A Report on Separatist Violence (1973-1992)] (Ankara: Turkish Daily News Yayınları, 1992), pp. 207-217; Gunter, The Kurds..., p. 63; Foundation for Middle East and Balkan Studies, Separatist Terror..., p. 8; Erciyes University, PKK Reality, pp. 50-57; Mickiewicz, Salomon, Raufer, Vannier, Deux "guérillas dégénérées"..., pp. 41-49; Criss, "The Nature of...", p. 29.
135 According to the Director of International Relations of the Swedish Police, Olander, PKK legally robs Swedish state through social aids. See Yeni Yüzyıl, 12 November 1995.
136 Criss, "The Nature of...", p. 29.
137 Mickiewicz, Salomon, Raufer, Vannier, Deux "guérillas dégénérées"..., p. 42.
138 İmset, PKK:...[The PKK:...], p. 211.
139 "Security Forces Continue to Battle PKK Drug Smuggling", Turkish Daily News, 24 May 1997.
140 İmset, PKK:...[The PKK:...], pp. 215-217.
141 Reuters, 21 May 1997.
142 As quoted from the German magazine, "Der Spiegel" in Hürriyet, 21 February 1995.
143 Yeni Yüzyıl, 12 November 1995.
144 İmset, PKK:...[The PKK:...], p. 209.
145 "PKK’s Central Bank", Hürriyet, 27 September 1995.
146 Metin Dalman and İsmail Tabak, Avrupa’da İnsan Ticareti ve PKK [Human Smuggling in Europe and the PKK] (İstanbul: DTPA Türk-Alman Basın Ajansı, 1995), p. 41.
147 Dalman and Tabak, Avrupa’da İnsan... [Human Smuggling...], pp. 54-55.
148 Dalman and Tabak, Avrupa’da İnsan... [Human Smuggling...], p. 160.
149 İmset, PKK:...[The PKK:...], p. 217.
150 As quoted from the statement by the chief of the Main Department of Anti-terrorism of Prosecution, Patrick Lalande in Yeni Yüzyıl, 12 November 1995.