The army's scorched-earth policy in the mainly Kurdish southeast has given it great success on the battlefield, but has not won many hearts and minds.

While coastal regions thrive, the mainly Kurdish southeast is impoverished.

Like many of Turkey's problems, the human rights dilemma has its roots in the Kurdish southeast.

Turkey's war against its Kurdish guerrillas has taken 20,000 lives since 1984, mainly in the Kurdish southeast.

More than 30,000 people have died since 1984, when the militants took up arms for a separate state in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.

But go to Diyarbakir, capital of Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast, and you are in the Middle East, surrounded by horse-drawn carts.

Similar scenes were played on Friday in towns across the predominantly Kurdish southeast and in Istanbul, the country's largest city.

People loaded the corpses onto donkeys which were led down the hillside to be loaded into vehicles to be taken to hospital in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country.

At the beginning of the 1980's there were 25,000 Chaldean Christians living around Mardin in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

Mr. Ocalan, whose Kurdistan Workers Party is fighting an 11-year-old war for control of the mainly Kurdish southeast, said the cease-fire would take effect on Friday.