...responded with Deception? To encourage Ankara to negotiate, the PKK announced a cease-fire on April 13, 2009. Erdogan did not respond -- but the security forces did. A day after the PKK's announcement, police rounded up 53 executives and members of the legal pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party on suspicion of aiding the rebel group. To Kurds, the timing looked suspicious.

The PKK had said it wanted to give Kurds and Turks a chance to solve the conflict peacefully, but in response the state arrested leading Kurdish politicians. Kurds also assumed the arrests were the prime minister's way of getting back at the Kurdish party, which had thoroughly trounced Erdogan's Islamist-oriented AKP in March 29 local elections.