HAKKARI (Turkey), July 13 -- South-east Turkey, where the army has battled Kurdish militants for decades, is not yet convinced that lasting peace is at hand.

In a slickly managed ceremony across the border in Iraq Friday, members of the Kurdish rebel group PKK destroyed their weapons as part of a peace process underway with the Turkish state.

But on the streets and in the tea houses of Hakkari, a Kurdish-majority town some 50 kilometres from the Iraqi border, few people express much hope that the deadly conflict is over.

Police, including undercover officers, patrol the streets of the small town and make their presence felt, an AFP team observed, which discouraged locals from wanting to talk to visiting reporters.

One tea drinker who ...