In recent years, the government — in an attempt to join the European Union — has made some concessions to the Kurds, but promised constitutional changes have yet to be made, and many people remain wary.

The struggle for Kurdish rights has been emotionally messy. Many in the Kurdish southeast are partisans of the P.K.K.; others remain sympathetic to the group and its ambitions but are, at the same time, weary of war and eager for a peaceful resolution.

Families find themselves similarly torn, especially since military service is mandatory for Turkish young men, including Kurds. The young men who feel the most passionate about the rebels run away to join them. Those who disagree with their methods, or are unwilling to live their lives as fugitives, are forced to take up arms for a country from which many feel deeply excluded — and sometimes to take up arms against those they know, or love.

Some Kurdish nationalists and analysts claim that the government has chosen in recent years to deploy more Kurdish conscripts in their home region, where they are more likely to fight the P.K.K., in an attempt to prove the rebels are cold killers and to gain Kurds’ support.

Image Credit... The New York Times

“In the past, posting Kurdish soldiers to the east was considered to be unsafe by the army because of the lack of trust in the minority,” said Mithat Sancar, professor of law at Ankara University. “However, recently it has become almost intentional that young Kurds would be at the forefronts of the battle against the P.K.K., sending the message that the group also killed their own youth.”

The notoriously tight-lipped Turkish military has refused to address the claims. But Taubet Gungen, 45, who lost her daughter, Heybet, needs no confirmation. “The state brings our children face to face, and makes brothers kill each other,” she said.