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Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, in a phone call with his French counterpart, suggested France disallow Kurdish people’s protests in the aftermath of last week’s deadly attack on a cultural centre.
Çavuşoğlu condemned French politicians who attended protests alongside Kurds and said they were appearing next to “terrorist” flags and photos, in his phone call with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Thursday.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said terror supporters had been “perpetrating acts of violence and clashing with security” over the Kurdish community in France protesting the killing of three activists when a gunman opened fire on a Kurdish cultural centre on 23 December.
The Turkish minister “urged” his French counterpart to “not allow” protests to spread, calling them “black propaganda”. Earlier on Monday, Turkey had summoned the French ambassador to denounce French government officals’ “involvement in anti-Turkey propaganda”, Reuters cited the ministry as saying.
Turkey’s Ambassador to France Ali Onaner also called on France to “prohibit demonstrations of the terrorist organisation PKK” in a tweet. “This would prevent politicians from being exploited!” he said on Thursday.
Some of the attendees in the past week’s demonstrations have been carrying flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and photos of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan.
¨French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack a “heinous” targeting of the country’s Kurdish community, while the mayors of Paris metropolitan and the 10th arrondisement visited the Ahmet Kaya Cultural Centre that was shot up. Left-wing French MPs have also visited the centre, with several calling for the PKK to be removed from the European Union’s list of terrorist organisations.
Meanwhile, Kurds have accused French authorities of not running an extensive investigation and ignoring possible links between gunman William M. and Ankara. The community demands that authorities look into possible ties with Turkey’s intelligence services, saying William M. could have been radicalised or recruited by Ankara while serving time for previous attacks on migrants. Current investigation continues with the assertion that the 69-year-old Frenchman was acting with racial motivation, not a political one.
