Ankara expressed its unease at PKK flags spotted during a funeral march over the shooting of three Kurds in Paris
Turkey has summoned the French ambassador over what it called “black propaganda” by Kurdish activists during a march to mourn three people killed in a shooting at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris.
French Ambassador Herve Magro was summoned on Monday for Ankara to express its unease after some marched in Paris with flags of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or suggested that Turkey was linked to the shooting, the state-run reported Turkish agency Anadolu.
Turkey “expects France to act calmly in the incident and not allow it [banned PKK] terrorist organization to advance their insidious agenda,” Anadolu reported.
On Saturday, members of France’s Kurdish community and anti-racism activists gathered in Paris for a demonstration of mourning and anger, a day after a Kurdish neighborhood was attacked by a gunman who admitted racist motives.
While the gathering was largely peaceful and protesters held portraits of the victims, some youths threw objects and set cars on fire, and police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
During the demonstration, people were seen carrying the flag of the PKK, which is banned in Turkey but not in the European Union. The PKK has been waging an armed campaign against the Turkish state for four decades and is seeking autonomy for the Kurdish areas in south-eastern Turkey.
“We have expressed our dissatisfaction with the black propaganda launched against our country by PKK circles and with the fact that the French government and some politicians are being used as tools of this propaganda,” the source told AFP news agency.
The 69-year-old Frenchman suspected in the attack, reportedly a gun enthusiast with a history of gun crimes, who was released on bail earlier this month, told investigators he didn’t know his victims and described all of them as “non-European foreigners”. than his enemies.