Wikileaks: Russia Might Be Arming PKK

A senior Spanish investigator alleged to the US that Moscow's strategy was to use "organised crime groups to do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government". Recent operations included gun-running to the Kurds "in an attempt to destabilise Turkey" and "arms trafficking" in the mysterious Arctic Sea cargo ship hijacking in 2009, the Guardian reports.

The quote from Wikileaks:

As an example, he cited Kalashov, whom he said worked for Russian military intelligence to sell weapons to the Kurds to destabilize Turkey. Grinda claimed that the GOR takes the relationship with OC leaders even further by granting them the privileges of politics, in order to grant them immunity from racketeering charges.

Earlier before the Turkish army said 72 percent of the Kalashnikovs used by the PKK are from Russia, 15 percent from China and the rest from Hungary and Bulgaria. There were also claims by the Turkish intelligence service a PKK leader had talks with Russian arms dealers and negotiated the sale of Russian-made rockets. Therefore Turkish diplomacy was focused on convincing Russia to end alleged support for the PKK.There was also a claim a Russian national was part of a PKK hit squad that killed police officers in Turkey in July 2010.

According to analyst Svante Cornell Russia utilized the PKK as a lever against Turkey to deter possible Turkish support for Chechen insurgents. He also claims that the Soviet Union used to support the PKK in the 1980s