New developments in Paris killings threaten to derail PKK peace talks
The Kurdish peace process in Turkey faces a new obstacle as leaked documents raise suspicions that Turkish intelligence was behind the slaying of three Kurdish activists in Paris last year.
On Jan. 10, 2013, three women, members of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, were found shot and killed in an information center run by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Paris. The brutal executions sparked outrage among Turkey’s Kurds and raised serious concerns that an attempt was underway to sabotage peace talks between the PKK and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan himself described the assassinations as an attempt to wipe out the peace process.
The French police, however, quickly caught a suspect, Omer Guney, who turned out to belong to the PKK just as the slain women and had even served as a driver to one of them, senior PKK member Sakine Cansiz. That’s how Guney got access to the building.
