As the EU prepares to issue a report tomorrow telling Turkey what it must do to pursue its ambition of membership, the Turkish army is setting out its stall for peace after years of brutal suppression of the Kurdish rebellion in the south-east.
With an eye on EU membership, it is claiming victory in its war on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and pursuing new challenges.
In the remote highlands of Tunceli, a former PKK stronghold, the situation appears to have changed dramatically. Only a few dozen rebels remain in the mountains - most PKK members have withdrawn hundreds of miles across the border into northern Iraq.
"This region needs social and economic help," Gen Tuncer Kilinc, commander of the 3rd Army, said. "The people are fed up with terrorism and now we are all fighting together."
Severe restrictions on travel in Tunceli and an embargo on the movement of food supplies have been lifted. A state of emergency remains in place, and there is still a huge military presence, but local people hope the violence has come to a permanent end.
"We used to live in the midst of the bullets," a village official said. "But the soldiers have really changed. They used to beat us and curse us, but they don't do it any more. It's been banned."
Instead, the army is making an effort to win hearts and minds by building roads, improving schools and touring villages with mobile health clinics.
But the task ahead is huge: unemployment is sky high and many villages have been forcibly evacuated by the state.
The EU has already welcomed the new focus on economic development rather than military might - it has been urging this direction since well before the trial of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, last year.
But there are some subjects that the army is still unwilling to discuss, including identity, ethnicity, and Kurdishness. These are issues on which the EU is expecting Ankara to make progress.
"Ordinary people want peace," said Prof Dogu Ergil, an expert on the south-east, "but they want peace with dignity. That means being acknowledged as Kurds, and respected as Kurds."
And that simply has not yet happened. To many Turkish soldiers, and indeed many politicians, concessions to those who want Kurdish cultural rights smack of concessions to the PKK. After 15 years of bitter conflict senior generals have issued blunt warnings that they will not allow the PKK to gain in the political arena what it failed to win on the battlefield. Few civilians in the south-east have any intention of taking on the army, but many have yet to be won over by the charm offensive.