As you show in your article about Turkey and the Kurds, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, is facing tough choices when it comes to the country’s fourteen-million Kurds (“Hopes Blown Away,” December 19, 2009). Earlier this month, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the deaths of seven soldiers in the northeast soon after AK’s promulgated bold reforms to improve the lot of Kurds. This has led to the ban of the biggest Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP). The DTP ban has reinforced the belief of many Kurds that the way forward is through bullets rather than the ballot box. Therefore, Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, is returning to the fray from his prison cell. Also, Murat Karayilan, a PKK commander in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, has exhorted the Kurds to “flow to the mountains,” which they seem to be doing now. As you point out, Erdoğan thus faces a conundrum: should he keep pursuing Kurdish reforms or abandon all hope? Well put. However, you fail to even mention that there are other players in this mess: the European Union and America. As a country seeking membership in the Union, Turkey should expect its support. Sadly, many an influential country in the Union is only relieved by Turkey’s woes, which push its membership even farther into the future. Although America can be of help to its long-term ally in the Middle East, it is now enmeshed in its own problems further east. So, Erdoğan’s troubles seem to be here to stay for quite some while, but only to the peril of both the Union and America.