"We want to live normal lives and not fear for our future," said Mehmet Demir, a Turkish Kurd. "Personally, I hope the army wipes out the PKK this time: it will be the best for everyone -- Kurds and Turks."

The small town of Cizre -- population 80,000 -- is located in Sirnak province, 45 kilometres (28 miles) from the border between Turkey and Iraq, whose northern, Kurdish-populated sector has long been a safe haven for the PKK as well as a springboard for its bloody attacks inside Turkey.

The fighting between Turkish forces and the PKK, a nationalist guerrilla force that started out as a Maoist movement, has been raging since 1984 at the cost of more than 37,000 lives.

The PKK is considered a terror group by most of the international community, including the United states and the European Union.

Demir, a 26-year-old restaurateur, says his worst memories are from the 1990s, when fighting between Turkish government forces and the separatists reached its peak.

"Everyone closed shop at 3:00 pm because of the violence and no one could guarantee your safety," he recalled, as his cousins waited on tables occupied mostly by journalists who flooded the town after Turkish troops crossed the border into Iraq on Thursday evening.

The Turkish army has advised journalists against travelling to the combat zones in rugged, snow-bound mountainous terrain and seeks to prevent them from going into Iraqi Kurdistan.

"Now," Demir said, "everything has changed" since the army cracked down and PKK fighters retreated to the mountains of northern Iraq where they are being hunted down by Turkish troops.

"The first thing we need here now is investment," odd-job man Necati Cireli, 32, said through the smoke of the cigarette dangling from his lips as he perched on a stool and chatted with friends at a nearby teahouse.

"If the PKK is completely wiped out, businessmen from this region who went to the west (of Turkey) to build factories can come back here to do business," he said optimistically.

The only sign in Cizre of the fighting raging across the border was a military convoy crossing town on its way there.

Other than that, there is no visible military presence and life continues as usual, residents gathering in the marketplace to shop and chat.

But some locals fear that the Turkish military operation in the neighbouring mountains will not be enough to wipe out the rebels.

"Poverty is what attracts the PKK and if you don't wipe out poverty you can't wipe out the PKK -- they'll just continue recruiting among the young people here," commented an elderly man who refused to give his name as he sat on the steps of a clothing store.

Unemployment in Cizre, as in all cities and towns in the overwhelmingly Kurdish-populated southeast of Turkey, is nearly twice as high as in Turkey's industrialised west and well above the national average of 10 percent.

"You have to get jobs for these kids," the man said, "so that they work and don't have time to think about doing stupid things" -- like signing up with the PKK and heading for the mountains of northern Iraq.