The Kurdish community is rising up.

The Kurdish Democratic Council in France (CDK-F) considered "inadmissible" that the shooting which took place this Friday in Paris, killing three people and wounding three according to a provisional report, should not be qualified as a terrorist attack.

"It is inadmissible that the terrorist character is not retained and that one tries to make us believe that it is about a simple militant of the extreme right (...) come to carry out this horrible attack in our premises", has deplored Agit Polat, spokesman for the CDK-F, during a press conference organized in a restaurant a hundred meters from the place of the attack.

"The political situation in Turkey concerning the Kurdish movement makes us think very clearly that these are political assassinations", underlined Agit Polat before adding that according to them, Turkish President Recep Tayyip "Erdogan and the Turkish State are behind these assassinations”.



The thesis of a racist crime

According to the French authorities, in the current state of the investigation, the alleged shooter would have acted alone and wanted "to attack foreigners" according to the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin.

The representatives of the CDK-F then called on the French authorities to “stop their complacency with the Turkish authorities when it comes to the security of the Kurds”.

"The French authorities must receive us and stop this cynical game", added Agit Polat specifying that he had "expressed these fears" concerning the security of Kurdish militants to the French intelligence services "just 20 days ago". .

"The Franco-Kurdish community is angry and afraid today," said Maître David Andic, lawyer for the CDK-F.

Present at the press conference, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, one of the leaders of the radical left party La France Insoumise, declared that he did not believe "in chance when it comes to the assassination of Kurds in Paris", near 10 years after the triple assassination of Kurdish activists in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, behind which the CDK-F claims to see the hand of the Turkish secret services.

A political refugee among the victims

With regard to the victims of this Friday, the training specified that one of them was a Kurdish artist recognized as a political refugee and "prosecuted in Turkey for his art".

The second man, “an ordinary Kurdish citizen” frequented the association “daily”.

The murdered woman had made a request for political asylum which had been "rejected by the French authorities", added Agit Polat.

In a press release, another organization of a diaspora in conflict with the Turkish authorities, the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF), addressed all its "condolences to the Kurdish Cultural Center, and to the CDK-F with which we let us maintain a long friendship forged in the mobilizations against pan-Turkism and Turkish fascism”.

Miscellaneous facts

Shooting in Paris: Police use tear gas to disperse Kurdish protesters

Miscellaneous facts

Shooting in Paris: What do we know about the suspect who shot in the middle of the street and killed three people?

  • Miscellaneous facts

  • Paris

  • Shooting

  • Ile-de-France

  • Kurds