Enraged by photos of French politicians among flags of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Ankara urged France to curb the PKK’s “anti-Turkish” activity on its territory in the wake of an attack against a Kurdish center in Paris.
The attack last week, carried out by a Frenchman with a record of racist attacks, aggravated Turkish-French tensions over the Kurdish question and strained the French government’s ties with its Kurdish community, as some Kurdish activists refused to believe that the shooting was the solo act of a mentally disturbed gunman. Several Kurdish activists directly accused Turkey of being behind the killings, criticizing Paris for failing to protect the Kurds from Turkish secret services and ultranationalists who operate on French territory.
