dozens of Turks shouted “Allah Akbar”

“It is a demonstration, nothing more”, specified the prefecture, after the diffusion of videos on Twitter showing dozens of demonstrators waving Turkish flags and shouting “Allah Akbar! (“God is the greatest”, in Arabic) in the city center.

The demonstrators were filmed brandishing their fists as they marched before being repelled by tear gas fire towards the station.

On Wednesday evening, the police had already intervened to prevent “several dozen” members of the Turkish community from “fighting” with Armenians in Décines-Charpieu, a town in the suburbs of Lyon which houses the genocide memorial Armenian, the Rhône prefecture had declared.

This demonstration intervened after an attempt to block, Wednesday morning, the toll of Vienne (Isère, center-east), south of Lyon, by militants supporters of Armenia which had degenerated, leaving four wounded, one of whom hit with a hammer.

If the prefecture of Isère had simply mentioned “clashes” with motorists, the local press questioned the Turkish community in these clashes.

Dijon had been shaken in mid-June by a show of force by hundreds of members of the Chechen community who had marched through the city for several nights in order to avenge the attack on one of theirs they said was the made up of members of the Maghreb community. Images of people brandishing weapons, fake or not, and urban violence had been widely disseminated, in France and abroad.