ISTANBUL — As I write, the latest war in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel rages on. Both sides have suffered — though in unequal proportions. Israel has now lost nearly 30 soldiers and two civilians. Meanwhile, over 600 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, including almost 100 children.

Every time these macabre death tolls arise, we are always reminded by Western politicians that Israel has a “right to defend itself.” One is left wondering why the Palestinians don’t have a right to defend themselves, too. If the answer is that Israel is a state while Palestine is not, then one would wonder who has deprived Palestine of statehood?

Of course, many Israelis — the liberals, moderates and peaceniks — support a two-state solution and view it as an urgent matter that must be resolved. The Israeli right, however, sees such moderation as naïveté, and argues that Palestinian militancy must be crushed by force before there can be any chance for peace.

These debates in Israel remind me of a similar debate at home during Turkey’s decades-long struggle against the terrorism of Kurdish insurgents. The conflict between guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (or P.K.K.) and Turkey’s security forces began in 1984, and has claimed more than 40,000 lives. The violence stopped less than two years ago, thanks to a peace process agreed upon by Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the jailed leader of the P.K.K., Abdullah Ocalan. (Mr. Erdogan, despite his growing authoritarianism, deserves to be congratulated for this achievement.)