The death of 17-year-old Tara Whelan from Kilmeaden in Co Waterford in a minibus bombing in the Turkish holiday resort town of Kusadasi on Saturday brings home to the Irish public the realities of politics in the troubled southeast of Turkey and how they are entangled with neighbouring Iraq.
Kurdish extremists are blamed for the attack, one of a number aimed recently at the huge tourism industry on the Aegean coast. It is heartbreaking that this young Irish girl should be a victim of such an atrocity, along with three young Turkish people and a British visitor who were also killed and 13 more injured.
During the intense war between the Turkish state and Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from the late 1980s until 1999, some 35,000 people died and over 2,000 villages were destroyed. Turkey's six million Kurdish population originate in the southeast but many of them now live in Istanbul and other major cities. They remain an impoverished and marginalised minority but have recently made rapid strides in civil and political rights - especially since the ceasefire and the trial of the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan after it. Turkey's aspiration to join the EU made its leaders more responsive to demands for reforms giving language, cultural and broadcasting rights to Kurds. Substantial change has happened as a result. Most Kurds see EU accession as a means to protect their minority status.
Informed observers are therefore perplexed as to why the PKK ceasefire was suspended last year, since the organisation has abandoned its policy of secession in favour of making demands on the Turkish state. Fighting has escalated between Turkish troops and PKK militants. The campaign against the tourism industry is presumably designed to damage it, recalling a similar one in 1993 which set it back for years. One convincing explanation is that the leadership of such an authoritarian organisation needs another war to prevent it from disintegrating. It has been provoked by a new spirit of Turkish nationalism stimulated by fresh doubts about EU entry and growing uncertainty about events in Iraq.
PKK leaders have found sanctuary in the Kurdish area of Iraq since the US-led invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein. The Turkish government has criticised the US for not pursuing them there and suspects a federal constitution for the country, now under discussion, would stimulate demands for a new Kurdish state, with spillover effects in Turkey. The horrendous campaign of suicide bombings against occupation forces and those of the interim Iraqi government coincide with the Kusadasi atrocity. While it appears this was not a suicide bombing, it inevitably becomes part of the heightened security tension arising from the London bombings.
The Government is right to demand tighter security measures from the Turkish government - they will be pushing an open door in that respect. The main Kurdish organisations have condemned the bombing. Suspicions must remain that it arises from the fragmentation of the PKK and was probably carried out by a linked group.