ANKARA, Turkey, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- A majority of the weapons recovered from militants in the Kurdistan Workers' Party are from Russian suppliers, an intelligence report found.
Ankara is struggling to address the so-called Kurdish question following decades of conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
The Turkish government is expected to press Moscow in the coming days on the financial and military support for the PKK coming from Russia, Turkey's daily newspaper Today's Zaman reports.
U.S. intelligence officials, the newspaper said, gave Ankara information that suggests the bulk of the weapons used by the PKK come from Russian arms dealers.
More than 70 percent of the Kalashnikov rifles and at least 85 percent of the anti-tank mines and rocket launchers are of Russian origin, the newspaper found.
Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay, meanwhile, met during the weekend with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, to address PKK concerns. The militant group is based along the borders between Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
Ankara last month passed a series of constitutional reforms that observers said broke through the psychological barriers blocking progress on the Kurdish issue in Turkey.
