Turkey summoned the French ambassador over the so-called “black propaganda” of Kurdish activists during a march to mourn the death of three people who were killed in a shooting at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris.
French Ambassador Herve Magro was summoned on Monday so Ankara could spread discomfort after some marched in Paris with flags of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or hinted that Turkey was connected to the shooting, the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
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Turkey “expects France to be careful about the incident and not allow the [banned PKK] terrorist organization to press ahead with its devious plans,” Anadolu reported.
On Saturday, members of France’s Kurdish community and anti-racism activists gathered in Paris for a demonstration of grief and anger, a day after a Kurdish neighborhood was attacked by an armed man who has admitted racist motives.
While the meeting was mostly peaceful and demonstrators held up portraits of the victims, some youths threw objects and set fire to cars, and police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.
During the demonstration, people were seen carrying the PKK flag, 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 striving for autonomy for the Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey.
“We have expressed our dissatisfaction with the black propaganda being launched against our country by PKK circles and with the fact that the French government and some politicians are being used as a tool for this propaganda,” the source told AFP news agency.
The 69-year-old Frenchman suspected of the attack, reportedly a gun enthusiast with a history of weapons offenses who was released on bail earlier this month, told investigators he did not know his victims and described all “non-European foreigners” as his enemies.