TURKEY:The office of the Turkish Veterans, Martyrs, Widows and Orphans Association is a good place to understand the pressure building up on prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to send the army into northern Iraq.
Victims of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), their relatives and volunteers have flocked to the office this week to organise a protest march that is expected to draw more than 50,000 people on Saturday. Many wear black, in mourning for the 40 Turks killed by the PKK in the past month.
When I sit down to talk to Hatice and Hasan Sasdin, whose son Abdullah was the most recent of 248 Kayseri men to be killed by the separatist guerrillas, sombre, angry faces press in around us. My interpreter weeps. So does the blind man sitting a few feet away. A pretty blonde television presenter who volunteers to edit the association's magazine, Martyrs, listens stony-faced.
In the past 23 years, says Mete Kurt, a veteran who lost both his legs in a PKK ambush and the head of the local association, 10,000 Turkish soldiers have been killed and 5,235 others permanently disabled by the PKK.
Ms Sasdin pulls a photograph of a handsome officer in uniform from her pocket. Her son Abdullah's life is summed up simply: September 10th, 1977, to August 4th, 2007. The young man died with two other soldiers at Dicle, near the Iraqi border, when the PKK detonated a remote control bomb under his patrol.
"We collapsed when they told us; the world went black," Ms Sasdin says. "I ask God to give this pain to no one else. I blame the PKK and America, because the guns were provided by America. They should hang [ the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah] Ocalan."
PKK attacks have prompted calls to restore the death penalty, which Turkey abolished in the hope of joining the EU.
"We want the government to stop the problem," says Mr Sasdin, a retired textile worker. "They should just go into Iraq and finish them off, because we put so much love and effort into raising our sons."
Relations with the US were already strained over a congressional committee's vote recognising the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide. But the PKK offensive is stretching the Turkish-American alliance to the limit. Desperate US attempts to head off Turkish retaliation merely strengthen the popular conviction that Washington supports the Kurdish separatists.
"The street demonstrations are not against the PKK; they are against America," says Oktay Ensari, the local representative of Dogan, Turkey's largest media group. "The US invaded Iraq for oil, and now they are using the PKK as proxies, to intimidate and demoralise Turkey. Before, the US used Kurds as proxies against Saddam; now they use them as proxies against Turkey, Syria and Iran."
Far-fetched as it sounds, the New York Times this week quoted guerrillas from PJAK, an offshoot of the PKK that fights Iran, saying they have contacts with US officials.
Turkey's war with the PKK has inspired wild conspiracy theories. "This game is part of George W Bush's plan for the Middle East after 9/11," says Kurt.
"The US attacks civilians all over the world, and they won't let us go into Iraq. We know America did the 9/11 attacks itself, and that there is no such person as Osama bin Laden."
Yilmaz Uckan (34) was blinded by a PKK attack 10 years ago.
"They hit us with rockets," he recalls. "My commander was blown into 35 pieces. This has nothing to do with human rights."
Uckan says Turkey is the victim of double standards: "When one Israeli soldier dies, everyone says Israel has the right to defend itself. But when we lose many soldiers, no one supports us. Why?"
Turkey refuses to consider the PKK ceasefire proposed by Iraqi and US officials on the grounds that only legitimate armies - not "terrorist" organisations - can conclude ceasefires. Ankara is also resisting US and Iraqi pressure to deal directly with Massoud Barzani's Kurdish regional government, which has the most sway over the PKK.