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Erdogan's historic gamble on PKK peace begins to falter

Before his premiership was blown off course by mass protests in June, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was preparing to go down in history by ending Turkey's biggest problem: the country's Kurdish conflict.

The Turkish prime minister began this year with the equivalent of a thunderbolt: news that his government was talking to Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in an attempt to end a conflict in which 35,000 people have died over three decades. A ceasefire soon followed, as did an announcement the PKK would withdraw its fighters from Turkish territory to northern Iraq.

But now the question in the battle-weary southeast is whether the peace process is breaking down under a distracted Mr Erdogan.

The answer may come soon: last week, the Turkish prime minister made his most negative comments yet about the process.

He is now consulting with his cabinet and party about a reform package that could expand Kurdish political and linguistic rights. But some analysts suggest that in the wake of the government crackdown on the June protests, Mr Erdogan is less willing or able to cede ground to the Kurds.

"How can this guy, who is trying to keep his own core constituency by pushing nationalism and conservatism, give the Kurds what they want politically?" asks Soli Ozel, a professor at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. "I can't see it - unless the absence of war is good enough."

The strategic significance of a deal is clear. In addition to resolving a dispute in which so many have died within Turkey itself, peace could foster better relations with the oil rich Kurds of northern Iraq and reduce Ankara's concerns about a PKK offshoot now establishing itself on Turkey's border with Syria.

But at present many Kurds say that PKK recruitment is on the rise, warning that with an increasingly alienated younger Kurdish generation, Mr Erdogan could be the last Turkish leader with the opportunity to reach a deal.

In the Kurdish heartland of southeastern Turkey, concerns are widely expressed that, whatever the reason, the peace process may have run out of road.

Sometimes even members of the security forces now question whether Mr Erdogan really plans to resolve the conflict or is instead playing for time ahead of elections next year.

The road from the provincial capital of Hakkari to the border outpost of Cukurca twists past the ruins of Kurdish villages - destroyed by the army in the 1990s in an attempt to prevent villagers from feeding and harbouring the PKK. In one settlement a group of village guards gathers - Kurdish locals, wearing traditional baggy trousers, carrying rifles and paid to help the army and the paramilitary gendarmes in their fight against the PKK.

The men, all veterans, are no strangers to fighting: just over a year ago, they were involved in a clash that left 14 PKK members, six soldiers and two village guards dead.

One of the men, Nabi, says his brother joined the PKK long ago, while he himself had no option but to join the local guard if he was to remain in the village. "What kind of a job is it where brothers are killing each other?" he asks. "We don't want to kill any more."

Nabi voices his fears that the war will restart, as his companions nod their assent: "Turkey hasn't taken any steps; the PKK went away, they stopped the war, but Turkey is just playing for time."

It is an argument Turkish officials furiously dispute.

Mr Erdogan himself has suggested he may call parliament to break its summer recess to agree on a "democratisation package" that could address Kurdish demands. But he has seemingly excluded two of the biggest issues.

Last Friday he said it was impossible to allow children to be educated in Kurdish languages as a mother tongue, whether privately or publicly, and signalled his opposition to reducing the steep 10 per cent threshold for parties to enter the Turkish parliament.

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>Perhaps most significantly of all, he said the PKK had broken its promise to pull out militants, withdrawing only 20 per cent, "most of whom are women, children and the elderly".

Against such a backdrop, the tension in the region is sometimes palpable. In the smuggling town of Yuksekova, the main streets are full of special forces policemen, in jeans and T-shirts, AK-47s drooping by their sides, as armoured vehicles queue up behind them.

On the hills above, four Kurdish women sitting on the steps of their ramshackle house say all their men have been killed or imprisoned or have joined the PKK. Despite official denials, many Kurds say the government is reinforcing military and police installations.

Still, in his office in Hakkari, Orhan Alimoglu, the Ankara-appointed governor for the province, emphasises the positive.

"In the last six, seven months our people have started smiling," he says of the ceasefire period. "Everything is different . . . Only very minor things have happened; it is the naughtiness of children, not worth talking about."

He highlights an airport being built for Hakkari, plans to open two new border gates with Iraq and efforts to encourage Kurds to return to their shattered villages.

Indeed, in the mountaintop settlement of Cukurca, villagers took their animals up to graze in the verdant high pastures this summer, enjoying a freedom of movement they were denied for 30 years.

But they complain they are still outnumbered by the soldiers garrisoned around them. Indeed, while the surrounding mountains are many and forbidding, there are still army watchtowers from almost every peak. Despite the tenuous peace, the installations of war are still very much in place.

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