The murders have also left the Kurdish community in Paris and elsewhere reeling.

Valls, the French minister, said that Dogan was the head of the Information Center for Kurdistan and that she was known to many in the community through her work.

She was also the Paris representative of the Kurdistan National Congress, or KNK, a political group based in Brussels, Belgium.

Akif Rizgar Wan, the British representative of the KNK, told CNN he had known Dogan for more than a decade and had last seen her in December.

He described her killing as "terrorism in the middle of Europe" and an attack on efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question.

"It's a very big loss for us," he said. "I cannot describe my sadness. I've not seen anyone else in my life so warm and helpful to anyone."

About 200 members of the Kurdish community rallied outside the Information Center for Kurdistan on Thursday morning but dispersed soon after.

A statement on the French website Jeunesse Kurde (Kurdish Youth) on Thursday urged Kurds and friends of the Kurdish people to gather in Paris.

Berivan Akyol, a spokeswoman for the Kurdish Cultural Center in Paris, said a demonstration would be held Saturday.

"We want to condemn these savage executions and the obscure political forces behind them. We are expecting at least 4,000 people," she told CNN.

More than 150,000 Kurds live in France, many of them in the Paris area, according to BFM-TV. About 90% of the population originates from Turkey, the broadcaster says.

Whether the murders will affect the high-profile negotiations in Turkey remains to be seen.

Throughout the long conflict in Turkey, the PKK has modified its goals from demanding a separate Kurdish state to fighting for the expansion of Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights, as well as the release of Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader.

For decades, the Turkish state discriminated against the Kurds, Turkey's largest ethnic minority, which now makes up roughly 20% of the population. The Kurdish language was banned, and Kurds were long referred to as "mountain Turks."

During Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's 10 years in power, the government has made historic outreaches to the long-oppressed population, an effort that included secret talks with PKK leaders in 2005.

But PKK-related violence has spiked recently, reaching death tolls unseen in more than 13 years, according to a report published by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit conflict mediation organization.