"We will not hesitate if and when there is a cross-border operation in northern Iraq. We are hand in hand with our state," the 27-year-old said outside his house in this small village nestled among hills about four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the border.

The village guards are a militia force of some 58,000 Kurds armed and paid for by the government to help combat the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging an armed campaign since 1984 for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.

"My village sided with the state after we suffered at the hands of the PKK. They used to come to our village and kill those who refused to give them food," said Bulut, who joined the force in 1995.

More than 37,000 people have so far been killed in the conflict that has displaced thousands and led to allegations of gross human rights violations on both sides.

"What the PKK is doing has nothing to do with ethnic roots. They are the ones that harmed Kurds the most. If they really are after an independent Kurdish state in this region, why do they keep killing Kurdish people?" he asked.

Created in 1985, the village guards were tasked with protecting their own settlements and their knowledge of the rugged terrain proved invaluable to the army in its efforts to weed out the rebels from the mountains along the Iraqi border.

They participated in dozens of cross-border operations Turkish soldiers conducted in the 1990s to strike at PKK camps in the neighbouring Kurdish-held north of Iraq.

Should Ankara decide to act on the parliamentary approval it obtained earlier this month for a full-scale military incursion, the village guards are likely to be called on again.

But in southeast Turkey, they are a touchy subject that sharply divides the Kurdish community: some view them as patriots, others as traitors.

"I don't need another state. I'm happy with the one I have," Abdulmuttalip Hanedan, a village guard for 19 years, said in his house in nearby Sirnak city as his men laboured away, building a mosque.

"I am for those who allow me to make a living and educate my children, not those who kill me," the 43-year-old said.

But the force has also been linked to drug smuggling, rapes, kidnappings, and murders.

"They are just opportunist warlords who use their power for their own ends. They don't care about the people," said a restaurant owner in Sirnak, who refused to give his name for fear of reprisals.

Many guards are accused of occupying the lands of people evacuated from their villages as part of an army campaign to cut off supplies to the PKK, then scaring away or killing those who tried to return.

According to official statistics, some 5,000 village guards have been accused of various crimes, but only about 850 have ever been charged.

In a letter to the Turkish government last year, the US-based Human Rights Watch called for the force, which it described as the source of some of the worst human rights violations in the region, to be dissolved.

"The village guards system is so dangerous and corrupt that... your government must take steps to abolish it and disarm the guards," the letter read.

Although successive governments have talked of gradually dismantling the force, none have taken action for fear of alienating a group with substantial fire power.

"We know that guns are not the future we want," Hanedan said. "But when I am being attacked by guns and bombs, I have to to be able to defend myself".