Nicolas Garriga and Angela Charlton, Associated Press
December 26, 2022 6:13 p.m
Members of France’s Kurdish community and others have held a silent march in honor of three people killed in a shooting at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris that prosecutors say was racially motivated.
Turkey summoned France’s ambassador on Monday over what it called “black propaganda” by Kurdish activists after the shooting.
Some have marched in Paris with flags of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or suggested Turkey was involved in the shooting.
On Monday, a 69-year-old French man was charged with racially motivated murder and weapons violations for Friday’s shooting, Paris prosecutors said.
The suspect told investigators he aimed to kill migrants or foreigners and then himself, and said he had a “pathological” hatred of non-European foreigners, according to prosecutors.
He was briefly placed in psychiatric care, but was later returned to ordinary police custody and appeared before an investigating judge on Monday.
The suspect’s name has not been officially released, although French media have identified him as William K.
The shooting shocked and outraged France’s Kurdish community, which organized the silent march on Monday.
Protesters marched from the site of Friday’s shooting to the site where three female Kurdish activists were found shot dead in 2013.
“Every day we wonder when someone will shoot us again. Ten years ago we were attacked in the heart of Paris and 10 years later again,” said Dagan Dogan, a 22-year-old Kurd at Monday’s march.
“Why was nothing done to protect us?”
The solemn march ended calmly.
Skirmishes broke out in the neighborhood where the killings took place on Friday, and again on the sidelines of a mostly peaceful Kurdish-led demonstration on Saturday.
Prosecutors say the suspect had a clear racist motive for the shooting.
Anti-racism activists and left-wing politicians have linked it to a climate of online hate speech and anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric from far-right figures.
The French government has reported an increase in crimes and violations related to race or religion in recent years.
French authorities have called Friday’s attack an isolated incident, but some Kurdish activists in Paris believe it was politically motivated.
Turkey summoned French Ambassador Hervé Magro on Monday to convey displeasure over what it called black propaganda by Kurdish militant groups against Turkey after the attack, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency reported.
Turkey “expects France to act prudently in the face of the incident and not allow the (banned PKK) terrorist organization to advance its stealth agenda,” Anadolu reported.
The PKK has waged an armed separatist insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 for independence, which has more recently morphed into demands for greater autonomy.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced many, with significant numbers of ethnic Kurds and alleged PKK supporters emigrating to European countries.
Turkey’s military has been battling PKK-affiliated Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq, and has recently launched a series of strikes against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.
Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist group, but Turkey accuses some European countries of leniency towards alleged PKK members.
This frustration has been the main reason for Turkey’s continued delay in the NATO accession of Sweden and Finland.
