Police clash with Kurdish protesters in Istanbul

Turkish police in Istanbul have clashed with hundreds of protesters marking the first anniversary of the murder of three Kurdish female activists in the French capital.

On Thursday, the Kurdish protesters demanded justice for the three activists who were shot dead in Paris on January 10, 2013. The demonstrators marched toward the French consulate in the city.

Police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the angry crowd.

The body of Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was found at the Kurdish Information Center in Paris with multiple bullet wounds to the head. The dead bodies of two other female Kurdish activists, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Soylemez, were also lying beside her.

“Don’t put the barricades in front of the women or the resolution of the Kurdish issue. Put them in front of those who try to obstruct peace,” said lawmaker Sebahat Tuncel, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

“Instead of solving the murder, they are intervening on those who protest against it. This approach is a proof of how the Turkish republic defends it (the murders),” said Tuncel, who was among the protesters.

Last year, thousands of Kurdish men and women held demonstrations in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir and several other cities to protest against the killings.

Thousands of Kurds from across Europe also congregated in Paris to seek justice for the fallen PKK activists.

The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the killings, which the French Interior Ministry described as “an assassination.”

However, Erdogan has said that the murder of the Kurdish activists was apparently over an internal feud in the PKK and thus an inside job.

The French police later arrested and charged a Turkish national over the triple murder, saying he was one of PKK’s members, a claim that the group denies. The case still remains open.

The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region since the 1980s. The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead.