As the government in Ankara grapples with its Kurdish problem, Turks are trying to recuperate from another bloody summer in a war that has already cost more than 6,700 lives as a result of Kurdish terror tactics and the government's vow to fight terrorism.
Barely a day goes by without the separatist Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK, killing soldiers and innocent civilians in southeastern Turkey. And if recent months are any indication, the PKK is purposefully striking at Turkey's most vital economic interests while sending vivid reminders of its cause to the rest of the world.
PKK supporters attacked Turkish diplomatic and commercial offices across Europe and in Australia. Since then, the rebels have kidnapped four foreign tourists, exploded bombs in the tourist resort of Antalya, wounding 23, including 12 foreigners, and attacked a passenger train injuring six people.
These incidents followed the collapse in May of a two-month cease-fire declared unilaterally by the PKK. Exiled PKK leader Abdullah Odan, who describes himself as 'the Avenger,' has vowed that "thousands, tens of thousands will suffer" in his latest campaign.
"The war will escalate. The PKK will take the war to Turkish cities. More people will die. This time it is more serious, its an organized reaction and that is good," says Bulent Mahmoud, a Kurd from eastern Turkey who faces 15 years in prison if he is found guilty of affiliation with the nation's top Kurdish separatist group.
Mahmoud, who shields himself behind a pseudonym, dreams of redrawing the political map of the Middle East, of erasing the lines that delineate current borders in favor of a Kurdish state on lands comprising territories that belong to Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
It isn't a vision he shares freely, yet some Turkish and Western analysts are beginning to argue that going some distance towards satisfying his aspirations could benefit Turkey.
"Ultimately, there will be an independent Kurdish state. Turkey could be its sponsor," say Mahir Kaynak, a former official of the Turkish intelligence service.
If anything, these analysts reason that Turkey should preempt the eventual emergence of a unified national movement representing some 20 million Kurds-an ancient ethnic group spread over Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Caucasus that speaks a Persian dialect - by granting its own Kurds autonomy and backing the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Such an approach would demand a radical break with Turkish policy that aims at assimilating Turkey's estimated 10 million Kurds into the Turkish melting pot. It also contrasts starkly with Turkish military promises to root out Kurdish separatists who have been waging a nine-year old insurgency in eastern Turkey.
Confronted with the mounting Kurdish violence, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller is likely to grant the military carte blanche to handle the Kurds. At the same time she is toying with plans to appease the Kurds by making Kurdish an optional language in schools, introducing Kurdish language television broadcasts, replacing Turkish names of towns and villages in the southeast region with Kurdish names and granting full administrative authority to predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey.
The prime minister and the Kurds are playing for high stakes. Turkish military leaders have warned that a failure to destroy the PKK by next winter could lead to the imposition of martial law in Turkey.
"We're very determined. If we cannot render the PKK ineffective by the end of winter, the possibility of martial law will be seriously considered," the commander-in-chief of the Turkish armed forces Gen. Dogan Gures told the mass circulation Hurriyet daily.
In this atmosphere, Mr. Mahmoud has good reason to fear the consequences of speaking freely. Arrested and charged with being a PKK sympathizer, he could be imprisoned for up to 15 years if convicted. Mr. Mahmoud still bears the psychological scars of months in prison after his arrest during which he refused to confess to membership in a PKK front organization.
Born a little more than 20 years ago, Mr. Mahmoud appears to be a model for the success of Turkish assimilation policy. An engineer who has learned foreign languages he has migrated from his Kurdish hometown in eastern Turkey to Istanbul where he is married to a woman of Turkish descent.
Yet, Mr. Mahmoud also represents a generation of Turkish Kurds who have been raised officially as Turks, but clandestinely as Kurds. The scion of a low-rankling Turkish government official, Mr. Mahmoud recalls accompanying his father as a child to clandestine Kurdish nationalist gatherings.
Taught Kurdish at home at a time when use of the language was forbidden in Turkey, Mr. Mahmoud remembers being afraid to open his mouth during his first years of school because of his broken Turkish. To evade punishment, he would move his lips but not wholeheartedly sing the Turkish national anthem in class.
Abuse in prison, he says, has made him more sensitive to the issue of human rights.
Yet, he encounters little sympathy among his relatives when he argues against the wanton PKK slaughtering of the innocent families of government-backed Village Guard units in eastern Turkey. "Kill the Village Guards together with their families so that we can live comfortably," he quotes his relatives as saying.
"I believe in human rights. Everybody has the right to resist repression. The PKK may have made mistakes, but the Turkish state is the cause of the problem," he says.
Conditions for Turkey's Kurds have improved markedly since Mr. Mahmoud's schooldays. The late President Turgut Ozal was the first modern Turkish leader to break with the insistence by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, that all Turkish nationals are simply Turks.
Mr. Ozal, who died in April, legalized the use of the Kurdish language and often noted that he himself was partly of Kurdish origin. The Kurdish heartland of southeastern Turkey nevertheless remains the least developed part of the country and Kurds still are restricted in their rights to cultural and ethnic expression.
Supporters of Mr. Ozal's approach insist that seeking a political solution to the Kurdish issue depends on the willingness of the PKK to cooperate.
"We really would like to have some sort of self-government, some sort of preservation of identity. This is not window dressing. It is the only way Turkey can find a durable place under the sun. The proviso, however, is that the PKK is willing to act within the fold. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be able to get through to the present leadership," says Amb. Umut Arik, head of the Turkish International Cooperation Agency.
But with a growing number of Turks arguing that Mr. Ozal's more liberal approach encourages separatism, even those cultural freedoms granted to the Kurds by Mr. Ozal are no longer secure.
Turkish journalists emerged recently from a briefing by Gen. Gures and other senior military officials with the message that Turkey may return to its pre-1980s policy of refusing to recognize the very existence of ethnic Kurds within its boundaries.
"The general belief is that rapid economic development and increased social mobility will make the (Kurdish) problem disappear rapidly," says Safi Tasan, head of the Ankara-based Foreign Policy Institute.
Giving in to Kurdish separatist demands, Mr. Tasan warns, could leave Turkey open to nationalistic demands from a far larger number of ethnic minorities who have seemingly been assimilated.
Mr. Tasan also rules out the possibility of Kurds across the Middle East uniting under one nationalistic banner. He argues that Kurds, rather than being a homogeneous ethnic group, are divided by ethnic, linguistic and religious differences.
"They are mostly tribal nomads who only recently have been settled," Mr. Tasan says.
Indeed, despite their strong sense of identity within the countries they inhabit, Kurds have failed to develop a feeling of ethnic unity that transcends national boundaries. As a result, they have often fought one another at the behest of their sponsors.
Supported by Turkey, Iraqi Kurds last year evicted the PKK from bases in their territory and have since pledged to help secure the Turkish-Iraqi border. Iraqi Kurds have repeatedly indicated that they would favor an even closer alliance with Turkey.
Kurds across the Middle East are nonetheless clamoring for recognition of their national and ethnic rights. Iraq has brutally suppressed Iraqi Kurdish aspirations, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. Supported by the West, Iraq's 3.5 million Kurds have established a semi-independent entity in northern Iraq in the wake of the l99l Persian Gulf War.
Iran wages a systematic campaign to assassinate Iranian Kurdish leaders in a bid to suppress demands for full autonomy inside Iran. Both Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish leaders reject the PKK's terror tactics as well as its Marxist ideology and contrary to the Turkish Kurds neither dare demand full independence for fear of losing international support.
To many Turks, calls for greater Kurdish rights within Turkey, the reluctance of European countries to ban PKK front organizations within their boundaries as well as United States support for the Iraqi Kurdish opposition against Saddam Hussein are all indicators of Western support by design or default for the emergence of an independent Kurdish state.
"The United States is using the PKK to exert pressure on Turkey to become more amenable to the idea of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq," says Mr. Kaynak, the former Turkish intelligence official.
Assuming that U.S. policy is likely to remain supportive of the Iraqi Kurds, Prof. Kaynak as well as a vocal minority of other Turkish and Western analysts argue that legalization of the PKK, a general amnesty for PKK activists, full autonomy for Turkish Kurds and enhanced Turkish support for the Iraqi Kurds could preempt the escalation of the Kurdish war and the emergence of a unified Kurdish national movement.
Certainly, Mr. Mahmoud and some Turkish and Western experts believe that economic and cultural incentives may no longer be sufficient to pacify the Turkish Kurds.
"Our main problem is that we are under the hegemony of foreign states. We are losing our identity. Without being able to be a Kurd, life has no meaning," Mr. Mahmoud says.
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