Erdoğan aide blames PKK for Paris street unrest that followed fatal shooting

A top aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday blamed street unrest that gripped Paris following the killing of three Kurds on the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Agence France-Presse reported.

“This is PKK in France,” Erdoğan’s foreign policy adviser İbrahim Kalın tweeted, posting images of overturned and burning cars in Paris.

This is PKK in France.

The same terrorist organization you support in Syria.

The same PKK that has killed thousands of Turks, Kurds & security forces over the last 40 years.

Now they are burning the streets of Paris.

Will you still remain silent?pic.twitter.com/5Tv72bPnnn

— İbrahim Kalın (@ikalin1) December 25, 2022

“The same terrorist organization you support in Syria,” he wrote in apparent reference to the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.

Ankara has been feuding with the US and European powers about their support for Kurdish fighters in the YPG, which it portrays as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK.

The YPG played a central role in the US-led campaign against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in Syria. It is not proscribed as a terrorist organization by either the US or the European Union — an issue of constant tension in their relations with NATO member Turkey.

“The same PKK that has killed thousands of Turks, Kurds and security forces over the last 40 years. Now they are burning the streets of Paris. Will you still remain silent?” Kalın wrote.

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

A source close to the case told AFP that the gunman admitted to investigators that he was racist.

Some of the people who joined the subsequent protests chanted slogans mentioning the PKK.