The Turkish President's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin has accused France of backing the Kurdistan Workers' Party* (PKK) in Syria, an organization which he said is now setting Parisian streets on fire.
"This is PKK in France. The same terrorist organization you support in Syria," Kalin tweeted, referring to French authorities.
He then referred to the PKK as "the same organization 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?" he added.
A 19-second clip attached to the tweet shows a demolished car on fire and a group of what look like Kurdish protesters clashing with police forces in the French capital.
Kalin's remarks came after Paris police chief Laurent Nunez told reporters on Saturday that at least eleven Kurdish activists were detained during protests staged by Kurds in the center of the French capital. The unrest was prompted by a shooting rampage near the Paris-based Kurdish cultural center on Friday.
In a separate development, the Paris prosecutor's office said that the shooter, who opened fire near the Kurdish center in Paris, killing three Kurdish activists and wounding three more on Friday, had been transferred to a psychiatric infirmary.
The 69-year-old, reportedly a Frenchman with a record of two assassination attempts in 2016 and 2021, earlier told police that he attacked the Kurdish community out of racial hatred. The prosecutor's office said it was investigating the attack as deliberate murder.
The Turkish government has been combating the PKK, which seeks to create a Kurdish autonomous region in Turkey, since the early 1980s. The PKK and Ankara signed a ceasefire agreement in 2013, but it collapsed just two years later over several terrorist attacks, which Turkey blamed on the Kurds. Since 2016, the Turkish armed forces have been conducting air and ground operations against allegedly PKK-aligned militants in Syria and Iraq.
*The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is outlawed in Turkey.