Turkey faces numerous political land mines as it prepares to rebuild war-torn areas of the Kurdish-majority southeast.

The country continues to be preoccupied by the fighting that broke out in July between government armed forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Over the past three months, their battles spilled over from rural areas into town centers in the southeastern part of the country, which has a Kurdish majority. Government troops have cleared some populated areas of the PKK, prompting Ankara to announce plans for reconstruction of a kind it has never previously attempted.

Information released Jan. 20 by the office of the chief of the General Staff said that since the clashes began, 610 PKK members had been killed in three areas: 364 in Cizre, 140 in Silopi and 106 in Diyarbakir’s Sur district. The number of PKK militants killed since July exceeds 1,000 when losses are included from 10 other towns that experienced occasional clashes. During the same period, 236 security personnel were killed.

Civilian fatalities now exceed 500. The dimensions of the social and economic ramifications of this conflict can be better understood by bearing in mind that the clashes in towns have displaced more than 1.3 million people. Some 400,000 students have not attended school for three months. The economic fallout in Cizre alone has reached $300 million because of the disruption in border trade with Iraq. If clashes continue at the current pace, Turkey will in four years have replicated the economic losses of the 29 years between 1984 and 2013.