After a round of ringing headlines demanding that Abdullah Ocalan must hang, some Turkish newspapers shifted mood yesterday, casting a sober eye on what it might cost the country, abroad and at home, to send the Kurdish guerrilla chief to the gallows.
"Hang him or not?" asked Gungor Mengi in Sabah, which had celebrated the news of Ocalan's death sentence for treason with a front page picture of a huge noose.
"This question must be answered not by sentiments lathered with anger but sound sense, taking responsibility for our future," Mengi wrote.
Emin Colasan, of the top-selling Hurriyet newspaper, said of the man accused of responsibility in the deaths of 29,000 over 14 years: "This man deserves to be hanged a million times over."
"But why should not Turkey seize any opportunity, however small, if it will end terrorism?" Hanging Ocalan could damage Turkey's standing overseas, compromise efforts to join the European Union and bring a violent response from his supporters.
Many Turks, however, share the feeling of nationalist commentator Altemur Kilic: "He's a killer and he deserves to hang. I'm only afraid the politicians will now spoil it all."
There seems little common ground at the moment between the two views.
"On the day of the verdict and the day after, we saw a vast national outpouring of emotion - a collective purging of feelings," one diplomat said.
It would take a courageous, or perhaps even reckless politician to demand the sentence be commuted to life at the moment, but the waters are being tested.
Several Turkish businesses in Germany were hit by firebombings early yesterday. Assailants set 12 cars on fire at a Turkish used-car dealer in the town of Tuttlingen near Stuttgart. In another attack in Stuttgart, assailants threw Molotov cocktails at a Turkish shop and apartment house.
Turkish troops backed by helicopter gunships fought PKK guerrillas loyal to Ocalan yesterday after the rebels made overnight rocket attacks on two army positions in south-east Turkey.
Five people were killed and five wounded in a machine-gun attack on a cafe and a subsequent firefight with police in eastern Turkey, the NTV news channel reported early today.
The report said a gang had attacked the cafe in Elazig killing four people who were inside. They then fled, firing their guns and throwing two hand-grenades in a nearby street.
Security forces intervened and one of the gang was killed and five people wounded, including a policeman, who was said to be in critical condition.