In the space of two days, bombs went off in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul and the popular Mediterranean resorts of Marmaris and Antalya, killing three people and wounding nearly 50 people, among them foreigners.

A radical Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), claimed authorship for all the attacks, calling them a response to Ankara's mistreatment of its Kurdish population and of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island.

For Turkish officials, TAK -- which has claimed 12 other bomb attacks this year -- is just a cover for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which, led by Ocalan, has been fighting a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey's southeast since 1984.

The PKK says TAK is a splinter group over which it has no control and argues that its own rebels do not attack civilian targets.

Furthermore, the PKK's number two, Murat Karayilan, told a news conference earlier this month that his rebels were ready for a ceasefire with Turkey as of September 1 for a democratic resolution of the conflict -- in contrast to TAK's bombing spree.

But for Turkish analysts, TAK and the PKK are two sides of the same coin.

"TAK is PKK. No Kurdish organisation can act outside the PKK," said terrorism expert Veli Fatih Guven. "Members of TAK may not organically belong to the PKK but their group is under PKK control."

Omer Laciner, editor-in-chief of the socialist magazine Birikim and an expert on underground organisations, agreed partly.

"TAK have a very militant racist discourse," he said. "Leaders of the PKK do not directly control the group, but neither do they condemn what the group is doing."

Guven said TAK's bombing campaign and the PKK's call for a ceasefire aim to serve two separate objectives of the Kurdish nationalists.

"On one side, the organisation (PKK) must absolutely continue its armed actions, otherwise it will loose its aura and its militants," he said.

"On the other side, Turkey has a new chief of staff and the tendency is to take sterner measures against the PKK. So the group wants to avoid this by officially stopping its violent acts," he added.

On Monday, General Yasar Buyukanit, seen as a hawkish figure who is likely to toughen the fight against the PKK, officially took the helm of the army with messages of no tolerance to separatist terrorism.

Another threat to Kurdish rebels comes from the reinforcement of cooperation between Turkey and various international actors to fight terrorism.

"Britain and the United States started taking concrete measures against the PKK following pressure from Ankara," underlined Huseyin Bagci, professor of international relations at Ankara's Middle Eastern Technical University.

"The Turkish government also seems efficient in its efforts to convince Middle Eastern countries to fight the PKK," he added.

Turkey has long been pushing the United States and neighbouring Iraq to crack down on PKK rebels who have found shelter in camps in northern Iraq.

In July, US President George. W. Bush gave assurances that Washington would help Ankara against PKK violence. Baghdad has also pledged not to let Iraqi territory to be a sanctuary for the PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Even if the PKK keeps a low profile and shies clear of violence, Bagci predicted hard times for the main Kurdish group.

"For the new army chief (Buyukanit), a ceasefire will not be applicable. There will be fierce clashes and the PKK will have a more difficult period," he said.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK picked up arms against the Turkish government. Violence has been mounting since June 2004 when the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire.