No foreign observer will scrutinise the trial opening next Monday of the Kurdish rebel leader Mr Abdullah Ocalan as closely as Turkey's tourism industry, which has suffered heavy losses from Mr Ocalan's capture and his organisation's subsequent threat to attack tourist resorts.
The mosques and museums of Istanbul have remained deserted this season, as have hotels and beaches in the resort towns dotting Turkey's Mediterranean and Aegean coastlines.
"In my 30 years in tourism, I have never experienced such a crisis," the chairman of the Hotel Managers' Association (POYD), Mr Sevki Bulut, said in a recent interview.
Oger Tours, the largest operator of tours to Turkey in Europe, this month announced it was in serious financial difficulties after the loss of 90,000 bookings since Mr Ocalan's capture and imprisonment in mid-February.
Some 60 per cent of previously made bookings for Turkish resorts have been cancelled since the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) threatened in mid-March to strike back by targeting the tourism industry, according to the Association of Travel Agencies in Turkey (TURSAB).
Hotels on the coast are operating at 10 per cent capacity and have had to dismiss thousands of staff. And more than 90 per cent of Istanbul's 6,000 registered tourist guides are out of work, as are 70 per cent of Antalya's guides.
All this is very bad news for the Turkish economy, which depends heavily on revenues generated by the tourism sector.
Tourism accounted for 5 per cent of Turkey's gross national product last year, and for almost 30 per cent of the country's exports.
Revenues amounted to $9 bill ion last year, but the optimistic target of $10 billion for 1999 has long been given up.
According to unofficial estimates, the industry may have lost as much as $3 billion before the high season has even begun.
TURSAB says the season is probably lost for good, but many desperate entrepreneurs are pinning their hopes on a quick trial and a possible revival later in the summer.
"What we are all wondering is, how long will the trial last?" a soft-drink vendor, Mr Abdulkadir Karayel, said gazing down the well-kept but deserted road along the Mediterranean coast at Fethiye.
The question is echoed up and down the coast by waiters, shopkeepers and restaurant owners. "It's really ironic," a waiter in the yachting resort of Gocek remarked, taking in the peaceful scene of the quiet harbour with a sweep of his arm. "Bombs are exploding all over Europe, but people are afraid to come here."
In fact, not a single tourist in Turkey has been harmed since the PKK warned holiday-makers to stay away.
"The warning itself has been enough to destroy us," the waiter said.
"Our only hope now is that Ocalan will be tried and sentenced quickly and that the whole thing will blow over in time for the next season."
Reuters reports from Mudanya:
Lawyers for Mr Ocalan said yesterday that Turkish authorities' decision that Mr Ocalan attend his treason trial while enclosed in a glass box violated his rights of defence.
"Ocalan will only be able to communicate to the chief judge through a microphone . . . he will not be able to hear his own lawyers, or anything else in the courtroom, his lawyer, Mr Ercan Kanar said.
"This is a violation of his defence rights," he said.
Extraordinary security measures have been put in place on the remote Imrali island where Mr Ocalan is being held, and where a makeshift courtroom is being set up ahead of his trial which is set to begin on May 31st.
Interior ministry officials have said the glass box Mr Ocalan is to sit in during the trial was bullet-proof and strong enough to resist the impact of a hand grenade.