Recent Kurdish violence may be linked to separatist PKK party infighting, writes Nicholas Birch.
It was known as the forgotten war: 15 years of fighting between Turkey and the Kurdish separatists of the PKK. More than 35,000 people were killed and more than 2,000 villages emptied before the guerrillas retreated into northern Iraq.
Since last June the war has started again, and the death toll is rising fast. More than 200 people died last year. This year has been bloodier.
What is far from clear is why the PKK broke its five-year ceasefire in the first place.
It long ago gave up calling for an independent Kurdistan. Fighting now only risks sabotaging Turkish hopes of EU accession, an aspiration nowhere stronger than among the country's impoverished Kurds, who see it as a means of achieving their political and cultural demands.
On Qandil, the PKK's Iraqi Kurdish mountain base since the early 1990s, wearying rhetoric only deepens the mystery.
"We want peace; Turkey wants war," says Haydar Ali, a member of the party politburo. He admits the bulk of PKK fighters are now moving into Turkey from positions just south of the border, and warns of attacks against tourist targets in western Turkey.
Though oblique, another official, Esat Farashin, offers a more convincing explanation. "Turkey," he says, "seems to think it can destroy the Kurdish struggle simply by ignoring us." A visit to Seyyed Sadiq, 150 miles to the south, suggests the party is destroying itself.
In the past year, a senior Iraqi Kurdish intelligence source says, "many, though perhaps not most" PKK fighters have left the organisation. Around 200 of them now live in this conservative town near the Iranian border. Their stories are revealing of the real state of affairs in the mountains.
For former guerrilla commander Hayri Dersim (29) the turning point was the capture and trial of PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.
"When I saw [ Ocalan] vow loyalty to the Turkish state, I felt betrayed," he says. He'd fought for seven years by then, and was wounded several times.
But disillusionment was not limited to the leader.
"When you're fighting, tight discipline is vital," explains Zuhal Serhat (25). "After the ceasefire, the orders began to seem mere authoritarianism. We demanded change. None came." Gabar Botan (30) is also sharply critical of the former Marxist-Leninist PKK's claims to have democratised itself since 1999.
He describes watching PKK leaders on TV referring to the party as the most democratic organisation in the Middle East. "We looked around us: free speech a sham, leaders who hadn't changed in 20 years." Like most of the ex-fighters in Seyyed Sadiq, Botan and Dersim quit last autumn, when the party briefly made resignations possible. Serhat fled late last April, walking all night through Saddam-era minefields to escape her pursuers.
"The open-door policy only lasted about six weeks," she says. "So many left the leaders decided not to allow anybody else out."
With Iraqi intelligence sources talking of a continuing trickle of PKK defections, she and her colleagues believe that almost all the fighters remaining in the mountains would leave if they had a second chance.
"Back when we joined, war was the only alternative," explains Gabar Botan. "That's no longer true."
An Iraqi Kurdish journalist who follows the PKK closely, Shwan Mohamed believes the main thing preventing the disillusioned party from dissolving now is its leaders.
"Their only concern is for their own survival," he says, "and they know the only way to achieve that is a new war."
Analysts also suspect fighting may be aimed at bolstering the party's fading hegemony over Turkey's Kurdish political movement, influence it won in part by ruthlessly eliminating opposition voices.
While the claims of PKK fighters in Qandil that "four million Turkish Kurds support us" are exaggerated, Kurdish civilian politicians are still loath to criticise them.
The rising bloodshed has seen a sharp rise in nationalism and - to an unprecedented extent - anti-Kurdish feeling in Turkey.
Ultimately, say saner voices, durable peace is only possible if the Kurds are weaned off what one newspaper columnist calls their "PKK addiction". Responsibility falls first to Kurdish leaders and Turkey's government, whose leaders have been widely criticised for visiting the southeast only once since coming to power in 2003.
Some think there is another option.
For Hasan Cemal, author of a best-selling book on the PKK war, the key lies with permitting ex-fighters like Zuhal Serhat back home.
"Nothing terrifies the PKK more than a serious amnesty" for the fighters, he says.
"If the government offers one, you can be sure that many will leave the PKK and come down from the mountain. You can also be sure that nothing terrifies the PKK more than this."