Thousands protested in central Paris on Saturday to pay tribute to three Kurdish activists who were killed a decade ago.
The march, an annual event since the killings on January 9, 2013, came two weeks after a third similar killing on December 23 at the Kurdish Cultural Center in Paris – just a few minutes’ walk from the site of the previous shooting.
Organizers say more than 25,000 people from across Europe have attended the rally.
They carried banners with pictures of the 2013 victims and slogans such as “The Turkish government has killed three more Kurds” as they walked from the Gare du Nord station in the north of the capital to the Place de la Republique, a popular place for demonstrations. .
In 2013, 54-year-old Sakine Cansiz, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) PKK, which had waged a long insurgency against Turkey, was executed execution-style by a gunshot to the head.
Two other women died in the same way: Fidan Dogan, 28 and Leyla Saylemez, 24 at the Kurdish Information Center in the 10th district of Paris.
The PKK, which is fighting for increased autonomy for the Kurdish population, is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Turkey is a member of NATO and it is considered very important to protect the south-eastern part of the military alliance.
A Turkish maintenance worker at Charles de Gaulle airport was due to go on trial for the 2013 attack, but died of a brain tumor shortly before the trial began, in December 2016.
Kurdish activists in France, home to the second largest Kurdish community in the European Union after Germany, have always claimed that the Turkish secret service ordered the killings.
In May 2019, French anti-terrorist judges were tasked with reopening the investigation.
The victims’ families say the investigation is being hampered by not having access to classified documents which France has refused to declassify.
“France owes us justice,” Metin Cansiz, Sakine Cansiz’s brother, told AFP before March.
His family, he said, had lost a loved one “sacrificed” on the altar of Franco-Turkish relations.
In last month’s attack, Abdurrahman Kizil, singer Mir Perwer and Emine Kara, leader of the PKK-linked Kurdish Women’s Movement in France, were shot dead by a man named William Malet.
French prosecutors said the suspect, a retired rail worker, confessed to wanting to “kill migrants”, but several Kurds who spoke to AFP said they suspected an act of “terror” organized by the Turkish state.
The killing sparked a large demonstration by Kurds in Paris on December 24.