Paris ( CNN ) -- Police in France have arrested a man in connection with the killing of three Kurdish activists in Paris this month , prosecutors said Monday . The suspect , Omer Guney , is a 30-year-old Turkish national who , prosecutors said , has been a member of the Kurdish nationalist PKK for two years -- the same group co-founded by one of the victims . The activists ' apparent assassination earlier this month sparked shock in the Kurdish community . Mystery had swirled around the slayings , with no claim of responsibility or any indication from authorities as to who might have pulled the trigger . The fact that one of the women was a founding member of the PKK , the Kurdish Workers ' Party -- a group viewed by Turkey , the United States and others as a terror organization -- led to heightened speculation . The killings come at a delicate time for Kurds in Turkey , where analysts say the government has recently entered into talks with Kurdish leaders -- among them the jailed head of the PKK , Abdullah Ocalan . Analysts have suggested the attack could have been an attempt to derail a nascent peace process in what is one of the Middle East 's longest-running conflicts . The PKK , a pan-Kurdish nationalist movement , is best known internationally for the guerrilla war it has fought for nearly three decades against the government of Turkey , a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives . The ethnic Kurdish population extends across parts of Turkey , Syria , Iran and Iraq . Last week thousands took to the streets in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir , Turkey , to mourn the activists ' deaths . The women were saluted as the `` three flowers of Kurdistan '' by a mourner using a sound system atop a bus , while some carried portraits of the victims or signs reading `` Sakine Cansiz is immortal . '' Cansiz , one of the three killed , was a co-founder of the PKK . Also killed were Leyla Sonmez and Fidan Dogan . French authorities said the bodies of the three women were discovered in the Information Center of Kurdistan in Paris . After the killings , French Interior Minister Manuel Valls told reporters in Paris the three women had been `` without doubt executed '' and described the killings as `` totally unacceptable . '' CNN 's Dheepthi Namasivayam , Laura Smith-Spark , Ivan Watson , Alexander Felton and Gul Tuysuz contributed to this report .
Prosecutors say the suspect is a Turkish national . The killing of three activists earlier this month shocked the Kurdish community . Last week thousands took to the streets in Turkey to mourn the slayings .