The Kurds seem to be a nation that has slipped though the net. While there have been few periods in this century when one Kurdish group or other was not fighting for an independent Kurdistan, they have so far failed to ride consecutive waves of decolonisation to be granted a state of their own. Their "misfortune", according to one commentator, "is not that they are separated, but that they are oppressed by the dominant races in the countries where they live."

But this separation is crucial to understanding why Kurdish dreams have so far remained unfulfilled. At first divided between the Ottoman and Persian empires, the Kurds, whose total numbers are estimated at around 30 million, are now divided between Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Europe. It is a division that has made it impossible for them to present themselves as a single constituency. Instead they are forced to battle piecemeal against the existing states in which they form a minority. It must also be said they battle ferociously among themselves.

The closest the Kurds have come to international recognition followed the first World War. As the Ottoman Empire was dismembered, the 1920s League of Nations toyed with the idea of creating independent states for both the Armenians and the Kurds. The ensuing treaty included, among other concessions, the creation of Kurdistan.

But with the rise of Turkey's founding father, Kemal Ataturk, who organised resistance to the post-war dismemberment of Turkey, Kurdish dreams of an independent state were dashed. After abolishing the Sultanate, Ataturk then secured revision of the Turkish peace settlement with the Treaty of Lausanne, in which no mention was made of Kurdistan.

But Ataturk's vision of a secular Turkish state met with Kurdish resistance from the start. They were uncomfortable with wearing the Turkish label, and with being ruled by Turks from Ankara or the British and Arabs from Baghdad. The Kurdish revolts of 1925 were ruthlessly stamped on by Ataturk, whose forces burnt villages and killed up to 250,000 Kurds. Since then Turkey has dealt with the Kurdish issue by following a simple formula: denying that Kurds exist and forcing the point home militarily.

Outside Turkey, the Kurds' finest hour must surely have been the short-lived Kurdish Republic of 1946. It was an autonomous republic formed within the borders of the Iranian state, in what was then the Soviet sphere of influence. While it never claimed independence, it assumed all the trappings of statehood, with a president, a cabinet, a national army and Kurdish as the official language. But Soviet forces withdrew from Iran in May 1946, and seven months later Iranian forces had subdued the Kurds.

Mustafa Barzani, one of the Kurdish Republic's most prominent military leaders, went on to lead Iraq's Kurdish Democratic Party, KDP. It is now the dominant Kurdish party in northern Iraq, its only opposition being the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, led by Jalal Talabani.

It is Talabani's PUK that, along with Syria, has offered valuable succour to Turkey's Kurdish Workers' Party, PKK - support that has meant the PKK, led by Abdullah Ocalan, has been able to wage a costly 14-year war against the Turkish army.

But Kurdish unrest in Turkey far predates the PKK. Draconian laws preventing Kurdish cultural and political activity led to mass demonstrations in the late 1960s. The Turkish government parried these signs of popular discontent by deporting tens of thousands of Kurds from the east of the country to the Turkish heartland of Anatolia. Many of these Kurds embraced Turkey's far-left parties and started campaigns of terror against the government.

These urban Kurds took back to their villages a militant brand of nationalism that ultimately led to the formation of the PKK. The repression in south-east Turkey following the military coup of September 1980 left the PKK with no shortage of volunteers. As its ranks swelled and Ankara squashed more moderate Kurdish opposition, the PKK emerged as the sole effective force fighting for the beleaguered Kurds.

In the 1990s the Turkish government's counter-insurgency has seen 3,000 Kurdish villages emptied and their occupants corralled into fortified hamlets and cities. Having lost their land and animals, Kurdish civilians are now the south-east's urban destitute. The recent round-up of Kurdish political leaders from the People's Democracy Party, Hadep, has again left them with no legitimate political voice and more inclined to the protection of their national hero, Ocalan.

With offices and training facilities in Syria, and bolt-holes in northern Iraq, the PKK was able to fight effectively against the second largest army in NATO. However, the Turkish government has now successfully plugged up these bolt-holes, firstly rattling scimitars with Syria, forcing Damascus to expel Ocalan and his fighters, secondly through incursions into northern Iraq.

But the Turks' military solution to the Kurdish question has not addressed the underlying injustice. Many Kurdish civilians simply want cultural and political rights, they want a living, and a chance to return to their homes. As long as the Turkish government continues to pursue a single-minded military solution to the dispute, and spend $8 billion a year on fighting the rebels, rather than developing the south-east, Turkey will have 15 million bellicose Kurds on its hands.

David Reid is a freelance journalist specialising in Third World conflict, who returned recently from south-eastern Turkey, where he reported for the BBC on the support among Kurdish civilians for the PKK.