Omer Guney, 30, was charged in France on Monday with the January 9 triple murder.

French authorities initially described him as an ethnic Kurd who had acted as an occasional driver for the most prominent victim, Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

In recent years, Guney has entered Turkey more than 10 times, the Hurriyet newspaper said on its website.

The suspect had been to Ankara between August 22 and 30 last year before travelling back to Paris and police are trying to find out where he stayed and who he met in Turkey, it said.

"I've just heard Omer visited Ankara last summer, but he didn't tell us," his uncle Ahmet Guney who lives in Ankara was quoted as saying.

"I am also curious about why he came to Ankara and whom he met with," he said.

French police sources said Guney had told them he had been a member of the PKK for two years, fuelling suspicions that the brutal murders had been the result of an internal feud in the organisation.

But that was denied by the PKK.

The killings came amid peace talks between Turkey's secret services and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan with an ultimate goal of disarming the rebels and ending three decades of conflict which have claimed 45,000 lives.

Turkey has suggested that the murders bore the hallmarks of an internal feud within the PKK between opponents and supporters of peace talks.