Fatma Kurtulan, the target of a media onslaught since the identity of her spouse emerged this week, warned that she was being made a target for nationalist attacks.

The controversy erupted after Kurtulan and two other members of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) travelled to northern Iraq Sunday to participate in the release of eight Turkish soldiers captured by the PKK in a deadly ambush last month.

Mounting PKK violence has prompted Turkish threats of an incursion into northern Iraq, where the rebels take refuge, and fuelled accusations that the DTP is linked to the separatists.

Kurtulan, 43, said that her husband -- who the media say is currently at PKK camps in northern Iraq -- had been away for 13 years and she remained married only on paper.

"This peculiarity of mine should be seen as a consequence of the Kurdish problem. This is a social reality," she said in a written statement.

"It is natural for people who are together in their private lives to have different (political) choices," she said.

Many Kurdish families in southeast Turkey have been torn between the state and the PKK, which has waged a bloody campaign for self-rule since 1984 and is listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community.

"I expect some media organs to review their attitude towards me... Otherwise they will bear the responsibility for racist and chauvinist reactions that I may face," Kurtalan said.

Another DTP lawmaker, Sirri Sakik, is the brother of a senior PKK commander who was captured and jailed in the late 1990s.

The DTP, which holds 20 seats in the 550-member parliament, advocates a peaceful settlement to the Kurdish conflict. But its refusal to brand the PKK a terrorist group and the sympathy its members often voice for the rebels have sparked accusations that it is a political tool of the PKK.