The Kurdish question has remained one of the most destabilizing issues for modern Turkey.Despite decades of military campaigns in the southeast and the existence of a continuing state ofemergency in that region of Turkey for more than a decade, various Turkish governments haveyet to resolve their Kurdish dilemma in a satisfactory way. According to the Turkish Associationfor Human Rights, some 3 million Kurds have been driven from their villages by the Turkish army,and some 3,000 Kurdish villages have been evacuated (ethnically cleansed) over the past fourteenyears. In addition to military campaigns in Turkey's southeast, disappearances, summarytrials, and other forms of political repression have turned the region into a permanent war zone.