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Kurds protest, Armenian community angered over Erdogan’s visit to Paris

Thousands of Kurds protested in Paris on Saturday over the failure of the French authorities to convict anyone over the 2013 murders of three female Kurdish rebels in the French capital, AFP reported.

The demonstrators repeatedly chanted “Erdogan, assassin”, in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday.

“Five years of silence, five years of denial of justice, five years of impunity,” read one giant banner held aloft at the forefront of a demonstration, which police said numbered some 4,700.

The bodies of the three women — Sakine Cansiz, a 54-year-old founder of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Fidan Dogan, 28, and 24-year-old Leyla Soylemez, were found with bullet wounds to the head and neck in central Paris in January 2013.

The Armenian community in France also expressed anger on Saturday over Erdogan’s visit to Paris, saying it revealed him a “dictator.”

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan showed the French his true face, a dictator who expresses himself as if he were in his palace, in defiance of the European standards which he claims to adhere to,” said the Coordinating Council of the Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF).

 

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