Three Kurdish Women with Ties to PKK Assassinated in Paris

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or پارتی کار که‌رانی کوردستان. It was founded in 1978 with the main goal of a an autonomous Kurdistan. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the World without their own country. It’s also recognized by the UN, and U.S. as a terrorist organization.

Strange times we are living in when three EU women related to the PKK are shot execution style in Paris, France. It definitely sounds like a professional job, what country’s assassination squad would be motivated is the question. There are many who don’t want to see Kurdistan as their own state.

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Here’s the rest of the story from Al Jazeera English. -Brandon

Three Kurdish women have been shot dead overnight inside the Kurdish Information Centre in Paris, including a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Their bodies were found at around 2am on Thursday morning [0100GMT]. All three were shot in the head.

“The scene leads one to think of an execution, but the investigation will determine the exact circumstances,” a police source told the AFP news agency.

French interior minister Manuel Valls, who visited the centre, also described the killings as an execution. “This is a very grave matter and this explains my presence. This is unacceptable,” he told reporters at the scene.

Sources in Diyarbakir, in eastern Turkey, told Al Jazeera that one of the women, Sakine Cansiz, was a co-founder of the PKK, the separatist group which has been fighting a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish government. Cansiz was one of the PKK’s European representatives.

‘We are all PKK’

Another was 32-year-old Fidan Dogan, who worked in the centre, according to its director, Leon Edart. The third was Leyla Soylemez, described by the group as a “young activist.”

Hundreds of Kurdish protesters gathered outside the centre in Paris to protest the killings.

The three were last seen on Wednesday at the centre, which was locked by late afternoon.