The press release issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) stated that Moldova-based PKK members Zeyneddin Geleri, Çerkez Akbulut (a.k.a Cernit Murat) and Ömer Boztepe were listed as “Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers” under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act) due to their drug trafficking activities in Europe. Furthermore, it was stated that Ömer Geleri and three Romania-based companies were included in the above list due to their activities related to Zeyneddin Geleri. As a result of this action, U.S. persons are prohibited from conducting financial or commercial transactions with the designees and any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen.

OFAC had previously listed the ringleaders of the PKK Murat Karayılan, Ali Rıza Altun and Zübeyir Aydar on 14 October 2009, and Cemil Bayık, Duran Kalkan, Remzi Kartal, Sabri Ok and Adem Uzun on 20 April 2011 respectively as “Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers.” The number of PKK members included in this list has now reached 12 with the final decision of the U.S. Department of Treasury.

We welcome this step taken by the U.S. authorities. We would like to stress again the importance of and the need to ban all activities of the PKK terrorist organization and its affiliated structures, which are known to be directly involved in all kinds of organized crime, including drugs trafficking for terrorism financing.