Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan yesterday demanded French President François Hollande explain why he had previously met one of three Kurdish militants shot dead in execution-style killings in Paris last week.

The deaths cast a shadow on a new initiative by Erdogan's government to launch a peace process to end a 28-year-old insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers Party's (PKK).

Erdogan said: "How can you routinely meet with members of an organisation labelled a terrorist group by the European Union? What kind of politics is this?"