Members
of the Kurdish community in France protested on Thursday near the
institute in Paris where three Kurdish women were found killed.
News reports identified one of the women as Sakine Cansiz, a founder of
the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the initials P.K.K. Another was
identified as Fidan Dogan, the head of the institute and a
representative of the Kurdistan National Committee. The third woman was
Leyla Soylemez, a youthful Kurdish activist.
The women’s bodies were discovered shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday,
according to Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris
prosecutor’s office, adding that the antiterror department of the
prosecutor’s office will oversee the investigation. She confirmed that
Ms. Dogan, born in 1984, and Ms. Soylemez, born in 1988, were victims in
the killings, but declined to confirm the identity of the third woman.
“No hypothesis can be excluded at this stage” about the motive for the killing, she said.
Visiting the crime scene on Thursday, Interior Minister Manuel Valls
called the shootings “intolerable” and said they were “without doubt an
execution.” The violence at the Kurdish Institute of Paris, in the
city’s 10th district near the Gare du Nord railroad station, seemed to
open a new chapter in the often murky annals of Kurdish exile life.
In recent years, Turkey has sought to clamp down on the activities of
Kurdish activists outside of Turkey, where sizable communities in
France, Germany, Belgium and Denmark have established civic and media
organizations that Kurdish officials say are a refuge from Turkish
censorship.
Turkey has accused some of the institutions of being fronts for separatist activities or terrorism.
Analysts in Turkey argued that it seemed to be no coincidence that the
killings had come just days after reports of the peace negotiations
involving Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the P.K.K. who was
incarcerated in 1999 in a fortresslike prison on the western Turkish
island of Imrali. While Kurdish militants blamed Turkey for the
shootings in Paris, Turkish officials said the women could have been
killed because of feuding within the P.K.K.
Huseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of the ruling party in Turkey, said
the episode seemed to be part of an internal dispute but offered no
evidence to support the claim.
“Whenever in Turkey we reach the stage of saying ‘friend, give up this
business, let the weapons be silent,’ whenever a determination emerges
on this, such incidents happen,” Mr. Celik told reporters in Ankara. “Is
there one P.K.K.? I’m not sure of that.”
French police officials said a murder investigation had been opened. The
bodies and three shell casings were found in a room at the institute.
The women were all said to hold Turkish passports.
The P.K.K. has been fighting a bitter guerrilla war against the Turkish
authorities for almost three decades to reinforce demands for greater
autonomy. The conflict, which has claimed some 40,000 lives, is fueled
by competing notions of national identity rooted in the founding of
modern Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
But, recently, Turkish officials have acknowledged that the authorities
in Ankara have negotiated a tentative peace plan with the imprisoned
P.K.K. leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
Turkey, the United States and the European Union have labeled the P.K.K.
a terrorist organization, but sympathy for the group and its goals
remains widespread in many towns in Turkey’s rugged southeast.
Restive Kurdish minorities span a broad region embracing areas of
Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and parts of the former Soviet Union. Regional
turmoil in recent years has emboldened Kurdish separatists inspired by
the example of Iraqi Kurds who control an autonomous zone. Turkey also
fears that the civil war in neighboring Syria could strengthen the
separatist yearnings of Kurds there, feeding Kurdish activism in Turkey.
The killings, which apparently took place Wednesday, inspired hundreds
of Kurdish exiles to gather outside the institute on Thursday, chanting
“We are all P.K.K.” and accusing Turkey of assassinating the three
women, abetted by the French president, François Hollande.
The bodies were first discovered in the early hours of Thursday by
Kurdish exiles who had become concerned about the whereabouts of the
women.
The victims had been alone in the building on Wednesday and could not be
reached by telephone in the late afternoon, according to Leon Edart,
who manages the center. Mr. Edart, speaking to French reporters,
suggested the victims may have opened the door to their killer or
killers.
An organization called the Federation of Kurdish Associations in France,
representing many of the estimated 150,000 Kurdish exiles in the
country, said in a statement that the women might have been killed on
Wednesday afternoon with weapons equipped with silencers.
The Firat news agency, which is close to the P.K.K., said two of the
women had been shot in the head and one in the stomach. Firat quoted
Mehmet Ulker, the head of the Kurdish representative group in France as
saying, “A couple of colleagues saw blood stains at the door. When they
broke the door open and entered they saw the three women had been
executed.”
Most of the Kurdish exiles in France are from Turkey. Their presence
dates to the mid-1960s when migrant workers from Turkey began arriving
in France.
The killings came against a complex political backdrop after the Turkish
government opened talks with the political wing of the P.K.K. in Oslo
last year. The negotiations faltered after a recent surge of violence in
southeastern Turkey that prompted complaints from nationalist Turks
that the authorities should not talk to the guerrilla fighters.
In the absence of any clear-cut military outcome, democracy advocates in
Turkey have been pressing for a political settlement that would give
greater rights to the Kurds, who account for around 15 million of
Turkey’s 74 million population. The Turkish government has introduced a
series of measures to improve relations with Kurds, including starting a
Kurdish public television channel and introducing private
Kurdish-language courses. But Kurdish activists want the rights of
minority Kurds to be enshrined in a new constitution.
In a speech on Wednesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the
negotiations were being conducted on the Turkish side by senior
intelligence officials.
While Mr. Ocalan, the P.K.K. leader, has a powerful following among the
rebels, he was denied a role in earlier political talks. But, analysts
say, Turkish officials are hoping that his participation in the current
negotiations, authorized by the state, has enhanced the prospects of a
breakthrough.
Turkish news reports have said the government wants the rebels to lay
down their arms without preconditions and send fighters with a record of
violence into exile in Europe, leaving other Kurdish representatives to
join Turkish political life. But analysts say any further negotiations
could be sabotaged by opponents if it appeared that talks were making
firm progress.
Sinan Ulgen, a Turkish expert and visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in
Brussels, said the most likely scenario was that the killings were the
product of factional infighting within the P.K.K. involving more
militant and hawkish elements within the group who wanted to destabilize
the talks and derail any peace deal.
“To me these killings are no coincidence,” Mr. Ulgen said by telephone
from Istanbul. “They are the first signs that factions are not happy
with the peace process and are intent on trying to sabotage a deal.”
Other analysts said the killings could be the work of extreme Turkish
nationalists, some of whom are virulently opposed to negotiations that
would lead to Turkey granting Kurds further rights and autonomy.
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