Turkish government responsible for Paris killings, BDP head says

ISTANBUL

Hürriyet photo

Ankara bears a large share of the responsibility for the mysterious murder of three female Kurdish activists in Paris last week, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-chair Gülten Kışanak said today.
 
"Turkey is as responsible as France in this case; these women are Turkish citizens. Any state that remains silent in the face of the murder of one of its own citizens cannot be called a state,” she said during a parliamentary group meeting.

"This massacre could have been stopped, but it wasn't," Kışanak said.
 
"If a bug can be placed in the private office of the Turkish prime minister, one can not say the deep state in Turkey has fully disappeared,” she said.

Kışanak, meanwhile, invited everyone to the funeral of three women, whose bodies were received today by their lawyers from French forensic officials and taken to Villiers-Le-Bel in a Paris suburb. The bodies will be sent to the southeastern province of Diyarbakır from Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris.
 
The bodies will arrive tomorrow in Diyarbakır, she said, adding that a spectacular funeral would be held Jan. 17.
 
Sakine Cansız will be buried in Tunceli; Fidan Doğan will be taken to Elbistan in the southern province of Kahramanmaraş, while Leyla Söylemez will be buried in the southern province of Mersin on Jan. 18. The three women were killed in an execution-style hit at a Kurdish center in Paris on Jan. 9. The identity of the killers remains unknown.
 
Commenting on rumors that the funerals could present opportunities to provocateurs, Kışanak said those in power equally categorized the Kurdish people’s sorrow and joy as provocative.
 
The BDP co-chair also described the ongoing negotiations process between the state and Kurdish militants as "belated" while expressing her party’s full support for peace.