The co-chairs of Turkey’s Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Saturday urged French authorities to bring into light the details of an attack against a Kurdish cultural centre in Paris on Friday.
“We have sadly learned that three Kurdish citizens died and three people were wounded in a violent attack against the Ahmet Kaya Cultural Centre in France’s capital Paris,” said Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar in a joint statement.
The two co-chairs condemned the attack and sent their condolences to the families of those killed and their wishes for immediate recovery for those who were wounded.
“We expect the French authorities to urgently reveal the perpetrators and attacks and to ensure that the public is transparently informed,” they said. “The only way to prevent such racist attacks is to immediately reveal the reality,” Buldan and Sancar added.
While the French authorities arrested a 69-year-old retired train conductor as the perpetrator of the attack, the Kurdish community in France and beyond have serious doubts about his involvement and raise their suspicions on possible Turkish role in the murders.
The Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella organisation of parties including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), called the attack a continuation of a similar attack that took place in Paris on 9 January 2013. Three Kurdish female activists, including a founder of the PKK, we assassinated by a Turkish gunman, who allegedly was linked to Turkish intelligence.
“Ten years ago, on 9 January 2013, the Turkish state have spilled over the massacre and genocide of Kurds to Europe by its attack organised in Paris and led to the massacre of three patriot, revolutionist Kurdish women,” the KCK said in a statement.
The union said that Friday’s attack had also been planned by the Turkish state, the Turkish government and the Turkish Intelligence Agency (MİT), adding that such an incident could not have taken place without the consent of the European countries and their intelligence agencies.
“If the 9 January massacre was not covered up and it was brought to light, this massacre would not have happened and such massacres could have been prevented. But since this was not done and the relations with the Turkish state and the MİT continued, a new massacre happened today,” the KCK said, underlining that the attack happened just weeks before the tenth anniversary of 2013 assassinations and at a place very close to the first incident.
“The French government says it has no relation to those attacks. If it really has no relations, then it should clarify those massacres and should unravel the truth,” it said.
The general assembly of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant group in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), released a statement after the attack, also calling on the French authorities to shed light on the massacre.
Meanwhile, PYD co-chair Salih Muslim also condemned the attack on Twitter. “We stay in our villages, our meadows, they destroy them and kill us; we run to the mountains, they kill us with chemicals; we take refuge in Europe, they kill us by sending their mafia, their gangs. I wonder, is there no place for Kurds on earth,” he said.
