travel in the South East Turkey - how safe is it?

If you do a bit of searching you'll find quite a few recent threads with this topic. Here's a bit of summary:

• Tourists are not being targeted.

• An already tense situation is getting worse with frequent attack on Turkish government/military/police as well as symbols of the U.S. after Turkey allowed U.S. warplanes to use the NATO air force base Incirli near Adana for attacks into Syria. Problems are also likely to increase in the lead up (and likely aftermath) of a special parliamentary election scheduled for early November that was called due to the failure to achieve a coalition after no party received a majority in the general election a few months ago.

• The most dangerous area is generally southeast of a line between Van and Mardin. There is very little of any interest to tourists in that area and it's likely best to avoid it altogether. Other hot spots are Diyarbakır (the unofficial Kurdish capital of Turkey) and the towns and villages south of the main highway that runs near the Syrian border and connects the most of the major cities (save Diyarbakir) of the area.

• The main things suggested when traveling in the area are to avoid being near government/military /police installations; immediately head the other way (and into strong shelter) should you see a crowd gathering; and (somewhat strangely given the previous) seek out police/military members should you feel personally threatened.

Personally, unless the situation deteriorates significantly I would have little or no reluctance to visit much of SE Turkey. It does however help that I'm reasonably familiar with Turkish, Kurdish and Arab cultures with significant private travel experience in parts of Turkey considered "dangerous" even before the latest problems. Were this my first visit to Turkey (or my first outside of British "colonies" like Marmaris, Küşadası, Gümbet, etc.) I would be far more reluctant. Why? Because I've spent enough time throughout the entire country of Turkey that is scarcely seems "foreign" to me anymore. Therefore I'm more likely to quickly sense when things are out of the ordinary with a very good idea of what to do and where to go before the situation gets dangerous.

I am there right now. in Hasankeyf, staying at Hasbahce for a couple of nights. It's lovely - though right now it feels like being in a sauna.
Our waiter at lunch told us 'Very hot last week - ok now' so we are wondering just how hot this place can get - and that's weather, not politics!
Our train, Guney Express, arrived in Diyarbakir this morning on a 20 hour overnight journey from Ankara. It being so hot we decided to splash out 10 TL on a taxi to the Ilci Otogari (minibus station) which is otherwise a 2 km walk away, just a little of it uphill.
The taxi driver told us a child was killed yesterday by police in Diyabakir. Our waiter in Hasankeyf gave a fuller picture, of 16 people killed, mostly due to a bomb that had been placed in/near(?) a police car. (We did not enter Diyarbakir. As Mike says, it's a likely hotspot - and that's not just the weather.)

Hasankeyf, and especially the Hasbahce down the road from the scruffy Hasankeyf Motel, is a lovely little oasis which is currently suffering from a lack of visitors so you'd get a real welcome here..

We've asked them about Mardin and they said 'ok, but don't travel there at night.' This is probably due to the fact that just outside Hasankeyf there's a police station AND a military unit facing each other on opposite sides of the road. As the PKK are targetting both lots of people, that's wise advice.

Otherwise, Mardin and Sanliurfa are quite ok and the latter is expected to stay that way for the forseeable future.
You need to check out other places closer to your travel dates, but I wouldn't let any foreign news reports put you off.
Hope you can enjoy your visit here as much as we are currently doing.

BTW - Hasbahce Hasankeyf has dropped off the radar as far as bookings are concerned, but they're up and going with even more rooms than four years ago and you'd be very unlucky not to get a bed there. Rate including breakfast is 60 TL per person but we negotiated 50 TL PP per night for two nights. (At my prior insistence my travel companion didn't go lower than that as I told him they really need the money and we shouldn't take advantage of the lack of bookings.)

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