PKK shooting: Kurds gather for activists' funerals

Thousands of Kurds have gathered in south-east Turkey for the funerals of three female Kurdish activists shot dead in Paris last week.

The bodies of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) members Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Soylemez were flown to Diyarbakir on Wednesday night.
Politicians have called for calm and urged people not to let the killings derail a fragile peace process.
No group has said it killed them, but many Kurds blame elements of the state.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, however, has suggested the deaths may have been intended to sabotage peace efforts.

Paris shooting victims

• Sakine Cansiz (R): Founding member of the PKK, and first senior female member of the organisation; while jailed, led Kurdish protest movement out of Diyarbakir prison in Turkey in 1980s; after being released, worked with PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Syria; was a commander of the women's guerrilla movement in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq; later took a lower profile and became responsible for the PKK women's movement in Europe
• Fidan Dogan (L): Paris representative of the Brussels-based Kurdistan National Congress (KNC) political group; responsible for lobbying the EU and diplomats on behalf of the PKK via the KNC
• Leyla Soylemez (C): Junior activist working on diplomatic relations and as a women's representative on behalf of the PKK

Officials have been in talks with the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to put an end to the group's armed campaign.

Mr Erdogan has also said his government will continue anti-PKK operations until the Kurdish militants lay down their arms.
On Wednesday Turkish jets reportedly bombed Kurdish targets in northern Iraq for a third consecutive day.
Last year saw some of the heaviest fighting with the PKK in decades. Since the conflict began, more than 40,000 people have been killed.
The group, regarded by Turkey, the US and EU as a terrorist organisation, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in south-east Turkey in 1984.
Flag-draped coffins The BBC's James Reynolds, in Diyarbakir, the unofficial Kurdish capital in Turkey, said the city was expected to come to a standstill for Thursday's funeral ceremony.
On Wednesday night, in the cold outside Diyarbakir's airport, a crowd chanted pro-Kurdish slogans as the women's coffins were unloaded from a plane. .
Demonstrators stood in front of a line of police dressed in riot gear.
Many wore white scarves in remembrance of the women.
After the ceremony the women's bodies are to be taken to their home villages for burial.
Turkish security forces have been put on alert ahead of possible demonstrations by the Kurdish minority after the funerals.
Large crowds gathered at Istanbul when the bodies were flown back from France on Wednesday.
At a memorial to honour the dead in the Parisian suburb of Villiers Le Bel earlier, thousands of Kurds paid tribute as the three coffins stood draped in Kurdish flags inside the community centre amid flowers and burning candles.