Supporters of the PKK terrorist group have found another platform to raise their voices in Switzerland. Photos and videos shared by media outlets linked to the group show an open-air pro-PKK event taking place in Zurich, a few weeks after PKK supporters hanged an effigy of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and unfurled banners in the city, calling for his murder.
In the event, the children are seen singing in a concert as part of a festival dedicated to Sakine Cansız, one of the founders of the terrorist group who was killed in Paris in 2013. Pro-PKK media outlets shared the videos of the concert on a stage adorned with photos of Cansız and Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the terrorist group. Among those who attended the event was Besime Konca, a former lawmaker of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-PKK party, who is wanted by Türkiye for her links to the terrorist group.
Switzerland is among the European countries harboring supporters of the PKK, although it is recognized as a terrorist group by Türkiye, the European Union and the United States.
In 2017, supporters of the terrorist group unfurled a banner calling for the murder of Erdoğan outside the parliamentary building in Bern. A Swiss court released four defendants who were behind the incident last year. Also last year, a group of PKK supporters tried to attack a Turkish festival in Basel, and six people were injured when the group disrupted a children's event, throwing iron barriers at the venue at participants.
The terrorist group wields influence in most European countries under the guise of what they call the PKK's fight for "Kurdish self-rule." It tries to legitimize a campaign of violence that has claimed thousands of lives across Türkiye since the 1980s under "associations" in Europe that seek to draw sympathy to their cause.
Europol, the European Union's main law enforcement agency, recently disclosed the PKK's activities in a terrorism report. The report revealed that members of some European far-left groups and anarchists have been training and fighting with PKK terrorists in northern Iraq, southeastern Türkiye and more recently in northeastern Syria, where most of the terrorist group’s attacks have taken place.
"The PKK is very active in the EU, mostly using member states as bases for administrative, recruitment and financing purposes,” it said, adding that drug trafficking and fraud are among the PKK's main sources of income in the EU, which is used to finance its terrorist campaigns. It said the terrorist group also operates an extensive propaganda apparatus across Europe.
