A senior adviser to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the riots that broke out in Paris last Friday after the murder of three Kurds and accused the Turkish-Kurdish separatist group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK is waging a war against the Turkish state in southeastern Turkey that has already killed tens of thousands of people in nearly 40 years, and Turkey has launched offensives in Syria and Iraq in recent years against groups it says are affiliated with to the PKK. .
The United States, France and other Western countries consider the PKK a “terrorist” organization, but their armies are or have been allies in Syria of a Kurdish group which according to Turkey is a branch of the PKK, with which the jihadists of the Islamic state.
“This is the PKK in France. The same terrorist organization you support in Syria,” Ibrahim Kalin, the Turkish president’s first secretary, personal adviser and presidential spokesman, wrote on Twitter.
It is “the same PKK that has killed thousands of Turks, Kurds and security forces over the past 40 years. Now they are burning the streets of Paris. Will you remain silent?”
Violent demonstrations erupted in France on Friday after a 69-year-old Frenchman shot at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, killing three, to denounce the attack and call for security.
The attacker was arrested, but authorities did not say what his motives were.
The French media, citing sources of the investigation, reported that the attacker admitted that he acted because he was “racist”.
The attacker initially targeted the cultural center before entering a hair salon where he was arrested.
Media reports say he was found with a case loaded with a box of at least 25 cartridges and loaded magazines.
Some people who attended the protests chanted slogans alluding to the PKK.
Kalin’s tweet is accompanied by a video showing overturned and burning cars, among other images of serious rioting that occurred in Paris during the march to protest the attack on a Kurdish center.
Kalin criticized the support of US and European powers for Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which Ankara sees as the Syrian branch of the PKK.
These militias have played a key role in the US-led campaign against the radical Islamist militia Islamic State (IS) in Syria.
Neither the United States nor the European Union considers the YPG a terrorist organization, which causes ongoing friction with NATO member Turkey.
Source: Telam Agency
