France is set to ban a Turkish nationalist group known as the Grey Wolves, the interior minister said Monday.
The dissolution of the Grey Wolves will be put to the French cabinet on Wednesday, Gerald Darmanin told a parliamentary committee.
"To put it mildly, we are talking about a particularly Turkish nationalist group," he said.
His announcement came after a memorial centre built for so-called Armenian genocide located outside of the city of Lyon was sprayed with pro-Turkish slogans including "Grey Wolves" and "RTE" in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The incident in the town of Decines-Charpieu came against a background of intense communal tensions in France between its pro-Armenian groups and the Turkish community over the conflict in the Yerevan-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Turkey has strongly backed ally Azerbaijan in the conflict over the region that is part of Azerbaijan but occupied by Armenian militants since a 1990s war as the Soviet Union broke up.
Four Turkish nationals got injured outside Lyon last Wednesday after being assaulted by the pro-Armenian group that held a road-blocking protest to show their supports for Yerevan side during the Karabakh fighting with the Azerbaijani side.
The move by Darmanin risks further stoking tensions with Ankara.
In Turkey, the Grey Wolves are closely linked to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of Devlet Bahçeli which had a political alliance with the ruling Justice and Development [AK] Party.
There have been months of tensions between France and Turkey, which reached a peak since French leader Macron started to make Turkey, Muslims scapegoat following the failure of neo-Napoleonic foreign policy in Africa and the Middle East.
