Terrorist organizations|“Some of the Kurds living in Europe consider the PKK to be fighting for their national and cultural rights,” says the expert.
of Kurdistan the labor party PKK has some kind of network in the Nordic countries, says a senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute Toni Alaranta.
On Wednesday, the Turkish media reported that in Turkey a Kurdish woman had been arrestedwho, according to Turkey, leads the branch of the PKK in Finland. Turkey, the EU and the US consider the PKK to be a terrorist organization.
According to Alaranta, there are also people in Finland who support the PKK. However, there are few people in Finland who concretely help the PKK somehow, he says.
“A much larger number are ideological sympathizers who show their support for the PKK by, for example, repeating the PKK’s slogan. In Finland, shouting PKK slogans and other indirect actions are not punished in the same way as in Turkey.”
According to Alaranta, ideological support and concrete helping are two different things. Concretely helping the PKK is an activity “in which a person has directly participated in committing or financing a terrorist attack”.
in Finland and in other Nordic countries, according to Alaranta, the organization’s active activities are largely focused on collecting money. This is also what the Protection Police told STT earlier on Wednesday.
“PKK of course needs resources and funding to maintain its operations. Some of the Kurds living in Europe consider the PKK to be fighting for their national and cultural rights.”
The Kurdish woman arrested in Turkey is suspected of, among other things, delivering money to the PKK, coordinating the activities of its members, and organizing the organization’s events in Finland, says STT.
in Finland compared to the rest of Europe, there are few Kurds. Therefore, according to Alaranta, the activities taking place in Finland for the benefit of the PKK as a whole are minor.
“You can take Sweden as a point of comparison, where the number of Kurds is ten times that of Finland,” says Alaranta.
“Sweden has also always had much more Kurdish political activity as well as PKK activity.”
Alaranta according to the arrest of the Kurdish woman, it is the first significant PKK-related operation linked to Finland after the intensified cooperation was launched during the NATO membership application. According to him, it is possible that there will be even more operations.
“Of course, you can come if such clear cases arise. Of course, it is just a matter of guesswork whether the cooperation between the Finnish and Turkish authorities has improved.”
However, Alaranta states that there has certainly been an investment in cooperation between the countries after Turkey’s demands in the NATO negotiations. In the negotiations, Turkey, among other things, demanded that Finland and Sweden should oppose the PKK together with Turkey.
Finnish, Sweden and Turkey agreed at the time of the NATO membership negotiations that the countries will intensify their cooperation to prevent the activities of terrorist organizations. One of these terrorist organizations is the PKK.
With the cooperation of the Finnish and Turkish authorities, among other things, it will be determined whether PKK supporters collect money specifically for terrorist purposes.
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