August 1994 marked the tenth anniversary of the bloody conflict in largely Kurdish southeast Turkey between the Turkish government and the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party guerrilla movement. What began in 1984 with isolated PKK attacks in rural southeastern Turkey has grown into a conflict that has consumed an estimated 13,000 lives, with over half the losses coming in the past year or so. Both Turkish security forces and PKK fighters are guilty of human rights abuses. Security forces operating in the southeast often make little distinction between civilians and PKK members, and the PKK has continued its practice of brutally punishing any cooperation with state authorities.
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