TURKEY: The death toll in a suspected Kurdish separatist bomb attack in southeastern Turkey rose to 10 yesterday, the culmination of a month of bloody violence that has pushed tensions in Turkey to boiling point.
Seven children were among those who died when an explosion tore through a bus queue in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Tuesday night.
The blast occurred hours after Turkey's largest civilian Kurdish grouping made an unprecedented call for the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, immediately to lay down its weapons. "This was a provocation aimed at taking us back to the darkest days," said Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir, whose Democratic Society Party many Turks see as the PKK's civilian wing.
Mr Baydemir has good reasons for concern - 250 soldiers have died since the PKK broke its ceasefire two years ago, 27 in the last month alone. Every death hardens the attitudes of the Turkish public.
The government has replaced last year's ground-breaking talk of a democratic solution to the Kurdish problem with ever more frequent calls for military action against PKK units in northern Iraq.More worryingly, Turkey's traditionally closely-bonded society shows growing signs of fraying round the edges.
Four migrant seasonal workers narrowly escaped a lynching in western Turkey last week after locals heard them speaking Kurdish and assumed they were PKK members. They were the latest victims of deepening paranoia. But it is not just nationalism the violence has stirred up. It has also triggered something unprecedented: open criticism of the state's running of this 25-year war by people directly affected.
"I will not say 'long live this country'," Neriman Okay said, as she stood over the coffin of her son, a conscript soldier, killed last week by the PKK. "I didn't bring my son up to be a soldier, and I do not accept his death. He died for nothing." In many places, what she called her "rebellion" would barely raise an eyebrow. In Turkey, it's been front page news for over a week.
"Neriman Okay has given a voice to all mothers whose sons have yet to do their military service, even those whose sons are still small children," wrote Meral Tamer in the centrist daily Milliyet. Much media coverage has tended to see Ms Okay's words as a protest against the government.
That tendency has grown since prime minister Tayyip Erdogan responded to criticisms of soldiers' deaths by announcing "military service is not a place where you just take it easy".
In a country with an 800,000-strong conscript army, it is a tactless comment. Some think it spells the beginning of the end for Mr Erdogan's government.
Yet, while Ms Okay targeted the premier, her criticisms went much further. "Sending boys who have never shot a gun to fight terrorists who've been in the mountains for 20 years is pure stupidity," she said after the funeral. "This should be a job for professionals."
Turkey's new chief of staff, Yasar Buyukanit, responded by saying he had respect for "anything the mothers of martyrs have to say". But analysts recall his first announcement on taking up his post last month was to insist there would be no change to the system of military service.
The rhetoric of duty he used is not usual. According to a textbook all Turkish students study, a man who has not done his military service "cannot be useful to himself, his family, or his homeland". It is a view backed by Turkey's laws, as novelist Perihan Magden discovered to her cost this July.
Her article defending conscientious objection earned charges of "turning Turks against the military". She faced three years in jail, but was acquitted.
Hauling a martyr's mother before the courts would clearly be impossible. But a campaign in one of Turkey's widest read dailies over the past three days suggests some in this country will stop at little to neutralise the effect of Ms Okay's protest.
"Beware of the trap" screamed the headlines in nationalist Hurriyet on Monday, over a photo of the weeping Ms Okay.
The paper went on to report on how the PKK had offered her its condolences, part of a plan "to break the moral link connecting the army to the Turkish people".
On Wednesday, the paper followed up with an interview with Gen Buyukanit, who thanked the journalist responsible for the original story for "laying out this most insidious of plans for the Turkish people to see".
"For the first time, almost, the government and the army are scared," says Eyup Can, editor of business daily Referans. "You can't wage a war if you've lost the support of ordinary people."