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RE: "Does Turkey have any problem with the Kurds in the eastern part of Turkey"

Here's an interesting news article from about 20 years ago. I believe it is as "fair" as you can get. This issue is volatile and the Marxist PKK has many supporters throughout Europe and here; of course, the government of Turkey as its take on the subject. This article comports well with what I remember from living in Ankara and what I've read since then.

This old NY Times article (written in nytimese) states that the Kurdish of the area have had the hardest time in Turkey -- this after reporting on the slaughter and gassing done by Saddam in Iraq. Go figure. Well I told you that the article was written in nytimese.

Nonetheless, the 1989 article states "it has become somewhat chic for Turkish politicians to acknowledge having Kurdish ancestors. Even the newly elected President, former Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, has done so."

"Baghdad has also been willing to grant the Kurdish northeast a measure of autonomy, even if not nearly as much as demanded by rival guerrilla bands led by Massoud Barzani and Jalil Talabani."

That's interesting because both Barzani and Talabani are key government leaders in today's Iraq and both were leaders of the Kurds' KDP and PUK parties when the two parties fought each other in the late 1990s.

"Turkish commentators and foreign diplomats say, official tolerance for greater Kurdish liberty will be limited by security concerns presented by the Government's five-year-old war against separatist guerrillas." That would be the Marxist PKK terrorists "recruited in Syria and not in Kurdish zones in Turkey. Their main training camp, official say, has been moved in the last year or so to the Bekaa, Lebanon's eastern valley."

Turkey worked out an agreement with Syria and Syria's support for the PKK ended (in 1998, I believe). About the only place left for the PKK was the "no man's land" in the mountians along Turkey's border with Iraq. Iran has its own brand of PKK to deal with, BTW. In fact, there was a Kurdish uprising against Iran during the 1979 Iranian revolution.

RE: "Is there any armed resisitance to the Turk government?"

"Turkish officials, opposition leaders and foreign analysts alike all agree that the guerrillas, with their Marxist ideology, have made little headway in a Kurdish population made up overwhelmingly of Sunni Muslims. Independence from Turkey is the goal of a tiny minority, they say, and what Kurds essentially want is more prosperity and some 'cultural autonomy.'"

That was twenty years ago. Turkey had just started pouring billions of dollars into the area to bring up the living standards and opportunities.

PKK was founded (some say with USSR help) by Abdullah Ocalan. He was captured, tried and convicted in the late 1990s. The PKK renamed KADEK (I read somewhere) has for some reason lately become deadly again.