Turkey: EU failing in PKK effort

Members of the European Union aren't helping Turkey in its fight against Kurdish separatists, the speaker of Turkish Parliament said. The Interior Ministry early this year called for a bounty of as much as $2.6 million for several of top leaders in the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish-language initials PKK. Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek said during a meeting with Italian officials that he was frustrated that suspected PKK supporters in Europe weren't extradited. "Unfortunately I haven't seen a single real step from the EU indicating that we are collaborating in an effective and useful way in fighting terrorism," he was quoted by Turkish daily newspaper Today's Zaman as saying. Cicek said Ankara suspected the PKK was funding its militant campaign in Turkey through the illicit drug trade in Europe. Washington early this year placed four men from Moldova and Romania on its list of designated drug traffickers. The U.S. government said it suspected they were dealing in illicit drugs to raise money for the PKK. A move in Ankara to settle simmering issues with the Kurdish minority was upended in 2009 when a court banned the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party from politics because of alleged ties to the PKK.