The expert spoke about the Kurdish trail in heroin trafficking to Europe

The transit of heroin from Afghanistan to Europe has historically been controlled by Kurdish ethnic criminal groups with ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK, recognized as a terrorist organization in Turkey). This was reported to Izvestia by the former head of the Department for Combating Drug Trafficking of the Moldovan police, Vladimir Cheban.

"What we've seen with heroin is that ethnic Kurds were behind most crimes of this kind. Many of them were related to the Kurdistan Workers' Party before it was disbanded," he said.

According to the former Moldovan policeman, the Turkish authorities were extremely sensitive to this data and provided information in a measured manner, since it was about their fight against Kurdish formations.

In total, the source identified two main routes of heroin supply. The first route passes through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Russia. The second one runs directly through Turkey to Bulgaria, and then to the European Union (EU) countries. However, Bulgaria, after strengthening the customs post, forced the mafia to change its path — as Cheban noted, today heroin from Turkey is increasingly entering Europe by sea.

For more information about the logistics of heroin trafficking, see the Izvestia article.

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