Iraq colors Kurdish campaign in Turkey's national election

Others say they wouldn't count out a DEHAP success on Sunday. Public opinion surveys show DEHAP winning about 7 percent of the vote. But election analysts say many Kurds are still hesitant to admit they support a Kurdish party, fearful the government will link them with the outlawed PKK or another militant group.

"DEHAP is an unknown, and they might surprise us," says Tarhan Erdem, a polling expert in Istanbul. "If DEHAP is able to make their supporters believe they can pass the threshold, they will get more supporters." Some non-Kurdish Turks, he says, particularly liberals who sympathize with the party's vaguely socialist outlook, may vote DEHAP as a way of protesting Turkey's establishment.

Take Ahmet Demir, who is DEHAP's secretary-general – and not a Kurd. He thinks that the party's success in attracting more voters comes from merging with smaller left-wing Turkish parties to show that the party's ultimate goal is getting Kurds and Turks to work together.

"The ideology that brings me to this party is that I'm a human being, I live in this country, and I want there to be more democratic space for people."

Part of DEHAP's agenda is to implement policies that have gone ignored: such as the lifting of the ban on Kurdish language education. Its goal is not, Mr. Demir says, to break off Kurdish areas from Turkey or any other countries with Kurds, which include Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

Between 4,000 and 5,000 PKK guerrillas are stationed in Northern Iraq. Turkey is afraid that if a war against Iraq begins, they will try to blend in with the expected flood of refugees into Turkey.

Demir blames Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit – whose support rating is so low that his Democratic Left Party is expected to disappear after Sunday's ballot – for using war jitters over Iraq as a campaign tactic.

"The Turkish prime minister is saying meaningless things, because no one is talking about a full independent state in Northern Iraq."

But Mehmet Metiner, a former politician in previous Kurdish and Islamic parties, argues that most Kurds would be delighted if a US war in Iraq led to the creation of an independent Kurdistan.

"The [DEHAP] party will say they're socialist and against the war, but they're hoping that a war will let the militants come down from the mountains and let Kurds live freely in Turkey."

Mr. Metiner says he's not voting for DEHAP – many Kurds won't, otherwise it would be assured of a bloc in parliament.

Kirisci says that about 14 million of Turkey's nearly 70 million citizens identified themselves as of Kurdish origin in a May poll, up from 12 million last December – another indicator of an increased comfort level.

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