Next came that wonderful egg and lemon soup, avgolemono.There followed a creditable egg mayonnaise, in which the egginess of the mayonnaise was surpassed only by the extra egginess of the eggs themselves, which had been chosen from one of the best breeds of hen on one of the best, most free-ranging egg farms in the country.Naturally, a banquet of this kind could not continue without a souffl or two, brilliantly timed, and there were still certain kinds of custard to follow, but somewhere along the line the bodies of the guests went into revolt They had received enough egg information. They had had enough variants on the pullet-sperm theme.So that, well before the climax of the evening, which was to have been a glass of egg-nog followed by a nourishing mug of Ovaltine, the diners were all either dead or in despair.Bright-eyed waitresses loaded down with trays of eggs mimosa were begged not to approach the tables. Superbly flambed jam omelettes were greeted with groans and pleas for mercy, and when the trolleys of perfectly decent crmes brules were sent whizzing back into the kitchen, the chef, the sous-chefs and the matres-sauciers took umbrage and came out to argue with the guests.They had as yet, the staff argued, not even scratched the surface of the egg repertoire - the sauces, the savouries, the tortas, the les- flottantes, all the modern variants on the meringue theme, the prairie oysters - whole continents of invention were as yet unexplored.Then there were new ways of absorbing egg substances, by inhalation of the powdered form, by intravenous advocaat drip, by absorption through the skin, by operations in which the stomach was opened up and crammed full of traditional Fifties egg-and-cress mixture. You sat down to dainty little pastry nests of quails' eggs, plonked on a scrumptious dab of mushroom sauce. They have had enough of a good thing. A meal was once devised in which every dish was based on eggs Each concoction, considered individually, was delicious. We admit that, technically speaking, there is no rule against a party being returned to office any number of times. It is just that, politically, emotionally, ethically and aesthetically, this repetition of Tory governments has saturated every appetite The Tories themselves are sick of Tories in power.

Turkey's Kurdish question is crying out for an answer that will grant elementary rights to the Kurds, make them equal citizens and remove the most serious irritant in relations between Turkey and the Western world.. The question no one can quite frame properly (the lethal question no Tory can answer) is: are you, the Tories, proposing to fight the next election in the hopes of winning? Are you seriously intending to prolong the agony? If you are going to ask for another five years (and supposing, in an astonishing reversal, the electorate grants your wish), who is to guarantee that at the end of that term you will not come back and ask for yet another five years, and another after that, and so on? It is this continual asking for more, this hogging of central power, this obstinate request for a second, a third, a fourth chance that has become so intolerable. It is the most appropriate way to remind the Turkish government that its Kurdish policies have a substantial effect on European public perceptions of Turkey and hence on EU-Turkish relations.To limit the damage, the Turkish armed forces must pull out from northern Iraq as fast as possible But that in itself will not be enough. But Turkey's leaders would be missing the point if they criticised the European Parliament for holding up the deal. Now, with 35,000 Turkish troops striking into Iraq and aircraft flying regular bombing raids from air bases in eastern Turkey, it is certain that the European Parliament would withhold its consent.That would represent not just an economic setback but a political blow to Turkey's secular leaders, because one of the Welfare Party's central objectives is to kill off the customs union, which it describes as a form of "enslavement to the Christian establishment".

To promote Kurdish rights is in Turkey's own best interest.Even before Turkey's incursion into northern Iraq, it was unclear whether the European Parliament would give the necessary approval to a long-awaited customs union agreement between Turkey and the European Union The obstacle was the treatment of Kurds inside Turkey. The last thing that anyone in the West wants is to undermine the secular Turkish state, particularly after the fundamentalist Welfare Party won municipal elections last year in Istanbul and Ankara. The south-east will have to be granted some sort of far-reaching autonomy with Kurds governing and policing Kurds. The alternative is a bloody guerrilla war in the south-east, probably coupled with an urban guerrilla war in the west, that will drag on for many years."Turkey's leaders would do well to understand that such sentiments are expressed in a spirit of friendship towards their country. In a recently published history of modern Turkey, Erik Zrcher, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, writes: "Turkey will have to become a binational state, with Kurdish as its second language in the media, in education and in administration. Quite apart from the disruptive impact that such a step would have in the Middle East and the Gulf as a whole, an independent Kurdistan in south-eastern Turkey would almost certainly provoke a backlash against the millions of Kurds living in Istanbul and other large Turkish cities.An insight into the fate that might befall these Kurds was provided two weeks ago, when the Istanbul police shot dead demonstrators from Turkey's Muslim Alawite minority, some of whom are Kurds. The Alawites had gathered in the streets because suspected Islamic fundamentalist gunmen had sprayed automatic gunfire into several Alawite coffee houses, killing three people.But if an independent Kurdish state is not a realistic proposition, that is not the case with proposals for Kurdish autonomy in the south-east.

Mr Demirel's predecessor as president, Turgut Ozal, was himself half-Kurdish. The longer the Kurds are denied simple rights such as education and broadcasting outlets in their own language, the more likely it is that the Kurdish question will evolve into a permanent crisis for the Turkish state, eroding the quality and ultimately the stability of the democratic institutions that were restored only 11 years ago.The issue here is not the creation of an independent Kurdish state. There are 12 million of them, out of a total population of 60 million. "Diplomatic, political and economic measures have to be considered."In contrast, say, to ethnic Germans in Belgium or ethnic Albanians in Italy, the Kurds are not a tiny component of Turkey's population.

No matter how carefully the Turkish armed forces go about their tasks, it is inevitable that civilians are killed in this type of operation.Wiping out a dozen PKK bases in northern Iraq will do nothing to alleviate Turkey's broader Kurdish problem. This problem is interwoven with terrorism, but it is fundamentally a matter of individual human rights and the right of a national minority to political and cultural self-expression. For all Turkey's protests that Kurdish rights are protected under the law, it is clear that most Kurds do not share this view.There are signs that some Turks have grasped this point. "Terrorism cannot be wiped out with cross-border raids," said Sami Kohen, a columnist for the newspaper Milliyet. Turkey has gone way too far in sending 35,000 troops into Iraq to destroy Kurdish camps from which, in many cases, PKK guerrillas have already withdrawn in anticipation of the Turkish assault. The same thing happened with Russia's assault on Chechnya, which transformed the Chechen leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, from a moderately ludicrous northern Caucasian strongman into a symbol of brave defiance of Russian viciousness. The PKK does not speak for all Turkish Kurds, and it is not the sort of organisation to which the West should be lending support.However, the government in Ankara has fallen into the classic trap of failing to understand that excessive use of force can only increase the sympathy of ordinary Kurds for the PKK.