LONDON — The overnight discovery in Paris of the bodies of three Kurdish women activists prompted instant speculation that the execution-style triple killing was linked to an attempt to disrupt peace talks between Turkey and a jailed Kurdish guerrilla leader.  Among the victims, who all died from gunshots to the head, was a woman identified as Sakine Cansiz — codename “Sara” — a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), which fought a bloody separatist war against the Turkish state.  In Turkey, news of the killings rapidly overtook latest reports of progress in talks between Turkish intelligence officials and Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed P.K.K. leader.  The negotiations, being held on the prison island of Imrali near Istanbul, are an effort to persuade the rebels to disarm, possibly in exchange for amnesty for their senior commanders and greater rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.  Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has ruled out a general amnesty, saying he wants the militants to leave Turkish soil, while one report by a journalist familiar with the talks said the plan was to ship the P.K.K.’s military leadership to exile in European capitals.  If the talks with Mr. Ocalan make progress, a reported next step would be to involve the P.K.K.’s exiled leadership in Europe.  The contacts have been billed as the most positive step toward resolving the decades-long conflict since secret talks between the two sides broke down in 2011, with the Turkish side at the time blaming continued armed attacks by P.K.K. guerrillas.  Not everyone, however, may have an interest in peace.  Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, pointed to a possible internal feud within the P.K.K. linked to the peace process.  The outlawed movement is certainly no stranger to internecine strife. Hurriyet, the Turkish daily, said the murdered Ms. Cansiz was “known for her opposition to the alleged head of the P.K.K.’s armed-wing, Syrian citizen Ferman Hussein.”  She had been in Paris since she was freed from jail in Germany in 2007 after the authorities there turned down a Turkish request for her extradition, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.  Zubeyir Aydar, an exiled political leader of the P.K.K., hinted at the responsibility of “dark forces” within the Turkish state who wanted to see the peace initiative fail.  That unsubstantiated suspicion was echoed by P.K.K. activists who gathered at the scene of the crime, the Kurdish Information Center in central Paris, to chant slogans blaming Turkey for the killings.  “It’s undoubtedly a political crime,” said Remzi Kartal, President of the Kurdistan People’s Congress whose Paris representative, Fidan Dogan, was among those killed.  “Ocalan and the Turkish government have started a peace process,” he said. “But there are those who don’t want the Kurdish question resolved.”  One of the barriers to the peace process is that Mr. Ocalan is confined to a jail cell in Turkey, while the P.K.K. leadership in the field is based in the mountains of northern Iraq.  He has asked his Turkish intelligence contacts to be allowed to communicate directly with the mountain base, the Kurdish Web site Rudaw reported this week.  P.K.K. politics is also complicated by the movement’s links with regional players such as Syria, where in the past it has been used as a convenient cat’s paw by the Damascus regime in disputes with its neighbors.  Bulent Kenes, writing in Turkey’s daily Zaman on Tuesday, asked: “Does Ocalan exert full control over the P.K.K., as is assumed? And does he fully represent the P.K.K. as he is supposed to?”  Pointing to the P.K.K.’s links with powerful regional players, he also asked which P.K.K. the Turkish government thought it was dealing with. “Iran’s P.K.K.? Or Syria’s? Or the P.K.K. which Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can freely support without any obstruction?”
French police investigating the murder of three Turkish-Kurdish women activists may have to look for clues in the murky politics of a Kurdish guerrilla movement with links to Syria, Iraq and Iran.