Erdogan aide blames unrest in Paris after firing on PKK

[ad_1]

Istanbul

A senior aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday blamed the street unrest that gripped Paris after the murder of three Kurds against banned PKK militants.

“It’s the PKK in France,” tweeted Erdogan’s foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin, posting images of overturned and burning cars in Paris.

“The same terrorist organization you support in Syria,” he wrote in apparent reference to the YPG.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.

Ankara is arguing with US and European powers over their support for Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it presents as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK.

The YPG has played a central role in the US-led campaign against the Islamic State group’s jihadists in Syria. It is not proscribed as a terrorist organization by the United States or the European Union, a problem of constant tension in their relations with Turkey, a member of NATO.

“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 still remain silent?” Kalin wrote.

The street protest erupted on Friday after a 69-year-old white French gunman opened fire on a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, killing three people.

A source close to the case told AFP that the shooter confessed to investigators that he was racist.

Some of those who joined the protests that followed chanted slogans mentioning the PKK.

[ad_2]