In the hours that followed the massacre in the rue d’Enghienin Paris, on December 23, most of the left-wing leaders of the Nupes immediately pointed the responsibility of the extreme right behind the gesture its alleged perpetrator, William Maletwho explained to the police that he had been guided by “a hatred of foreigners that had become completely pathological”.
But Jean-Luc Mélenchon very quickly favored a different reading, sharing the doubts of the Kurdish community as to the place and time chosen by the killer: the Ahmet-Kaya Kurdish cultural center in the 10th arrondissementat the time of a meeting of Kurdish women to prepare the commemoration of the assassination, ten years earlier, of three Kurdish activists in the capital.
“We believe that there is no coincidence and that what happened was a terrorist act which targeted political activists”, insisted the Insoumis leader the day after the attack which killed three Kurds. He has since demanded referral to the anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office and the lifting of defense secrecy in the case of the triple murder of 2013. The first elements of the investigation seem to contradict his thesis.
An admiration for the political model in Rojava
“The other political forces are not as closely linked to the Kurds as we are,” argues LFI MP for Paris Danielle Simonnet, who claims “a political proximity with a people who are fighting for their freedom”. LFI has thus forged political relations with the left-wing HDP (People’s Democratic Party, pro-Kurdish), “which is a bit like France insubordinate in Turkey”, she underlines.
“The Kurdish cause is ours”already launched Jean-Luc Mélenchon in January 2019, denouncing the turkish offensive against the Kurds in the canton of Afrin in Rojava, in the northeast of Syria, and the amplification of “repression in Turkey against the democratic opposition, and particularly against the Kurds”.
The Insoumis also do not hide their admiration for the political model of Rojava, Syrian Kurdistan. “It is a pluralist, democratic, feminist, ecological political project, committed against LGBT discrimination. It inspires us and interests us,” admits Danielle Simonnet.
In October 2019 blog post, Jean-Luc Mélenchon also defended the Kurdish people from a geopolitical point of view, repeating that he was “the only one to propose a political solution likely to build a lasting peace in the region”. And the opponent of Erdogan’s Turkey accused of “religious obscurantism and autocratic authoritarianism”.