Bulent and Edep are two Kurdish brothers operating a bakkal, or street market, in my old neighborhood in Kadıköy.

Over the past few years, the brothers slowly and steadily built up the market. In the early days, they started with mostly empty shelves. Now it’s a bustling bakkal, open every day until well past midnight. The surrounding neighborhood, which historically was home to Armenians and Greeks, but which for many years was dilapidated, has also undergone a positive transformation. Nowadays, the main street has been redone, and a host of cafes, restaurants and bars have come along to add a welcome vibe.

I’ve been going to the bakkal for years. Bulent and Edep have become friends, and they even spot me credit from time to time, near the end of the month, when the cash runs low. There’s a television inside, and usually when I come in, they’re watching either football or the news. These days, the news gets a lot more airtime. As you can imagine, the two Kurdish brothers have been following intensely the fighting south of Turkey’s border.

I remember one afternoon, going in to buy some beer.

“James, Amerika ! Big, big I love you!” Edep said, in his rudimentary English.

“Thanks,” I said, a little taken aback by this pronouncement. Edep pointed at the TV. They were reporting on the US bombing of ISIL targets. This was a few months back. I watched the news for a moment, and understood why Edep was so happy. The east part of Turkey (Edep and his brother are originally from Diyarbakkir), as well as northern Iraq and parts of Syria, are home to many Kurdish people. They are located directly in the heart of the ISIL threat; up until the recent present, it is mostly Kurds who have been battling the IS, protecting Turkey’s borders.

Edep was just expressing gratitude that the U.S. was finally – with airstrikes – lending its support.

“Amerika! Big, big I love you!” Edep said again, as I was leaving. Edep’s praise of America was undoubtedly sincere and heart felt, but it felt strange hearing it directed at me – as if I had personally phoned up President Obama and asked him to bring in the airstrikes. That is: As always, you feel in these situations like the Representative American. If something bad happens, then people want to blame you, again as if you were in with the highest levels of power.

But getting back to the story. Like Bulent and Edep, Kurds make up a key part of the fabric of this vast city. Many have migrated from the east over the decades, in search of work and better opportunities. Most are employed in relatively menial jobs. They are the drivers, the shop assistants, the waiters and busboys.

Recently, in the elections, Kurds scored an important victory, with their party passing the 10 percent threshold needed to get seats in the Turkish Parliament. I recall after the elections, talking with one of the drivers at my school, who is also Kurdish. He was very happy with the results, and like many Kurds, optimistic about the future.

These hard-won political gains have taken something of a hit this past week. Following the suicide bombing attack in the southern Turkish town of Suruc (the attacker was a suspected IS militant), as well as the killing of two Turkish policemen by suspected members of the militant Kurdish group PKK, the Turkish government this week joined in the battle over the border. However, at this point, the Turkish government’s focus seems more directed at the Kurds rather than IS.

A decades-long battle between the Turks and the PKK ended in a cease fire a few years ago, but now that cease fire has ended, with Turkish bombs hitting suspected PKK targets in northern Iraq.

I haven’t seen much of Edep and Bulent lately. Last week, when Özge and I were heading home, there were lots of police out in the streets. There was talk of demonstrations in support of the activitists who were killed in Suruc, the ones who were killed by the IS suicide bomber. Özge and I didn’t particularly wish to breathe tear gas, or tangle with riot police, so we ducked through some back streets to where we could get a bus home on a quieter street.

On the way, we passed by the old bakkal. Bulent was sitting outside, under a tree, talking with some of the neighbors. Many of the people living in the tenements nearby are Kurdish as well. In the evenings you can see the children out , playing football. In the past, Özge noted how many Kurds in such neighborhoods now openly speak Kurdish – something that in the past would have been discouraged, since Kurds were in theory supposed to be integrating into the Turkish population.

Anyway, we passed by the bakkal and saw Bulent sitting outside. I went up and said hello, and introduced him to Özge. He saw our wedding rings, and offered congratulations.

For a minute, he and Özge conversed in Turkish about the possible demonstrations. “The West doesn’t seem to be that worried about what’s happening,” Bulent said.I could tell that he seemed worried about the future. Of course, just a few days later, the Turkish government announced its intent to battle the IS, and soon Turkish jets were streaking over the border and bombing – PKK sites. Looking back, I can see what concerned him.

Kurds, for many years, have wanted to have their own territory, but not every Kurdish person is a member of PKK, which is listed by both America and Turkey as a terrorist organization. The fact is that the vast majority of Kurds are people like Bulent and Edep – honest working people, with no overt political affiliations. They spend their days, like most Istanbullus, working and getting by in this very demanding city.

Yet, as Kurds, they still retain strong ties to family and friends back in the east, and wonder now if the Turkish government is merely using the IS threat as a pretext for dealing with “the Kurdish dilemma” once and for all. What does that mean? Wiping out the PKK? The Sunnification of the Kurdish people, as one of my Turkish friends cynically suggests? The prevention of forming a Kurdish state? There is much speculation, on all sides. You hear the discussions in the cafes and bars, even at work. At any rate, those issues are far too complex and wide-ranging to deal with in a simple letter. But in a nutshell, while most people in the West view the IS simply as a terrorist group, for the Kurdish people, the IS poses a much more immediate threat to their long-term health and well-being in this very volatile part of the world.

Why should I care? Well, the struggles affect not just the Kurds. Here, in Istanbul, more than a day’s drive away from the tense Turkish-Syrian border, one feels the palpable tension. You feel besieged by a distant, or rather, not –too-distant, menace. Even in the bright, late-July horizons, something seems ominous, approaching. You feel besieged by the ever-changing reports, the uncertainty, the talk.

This past week, the government issued warnings for citizens to be on the alert for possible terrorist attacks in Istanbul, and to be especially careful around centrally located busy areas, such as Kadıköy.

That affects my wife Özge, in particular, since she works at one of the biggest palaces and main tourist attractions in the city.

“Be careful,” I told her the other day, while she was leaving for work.

She laughed in a tired, exasperated way.

“How does one ‘be careful’ exactly?” she asked.

“I know,” I said. I feel the same way when family back in the States says that in worried emails. How exactly does one “be careful?”

I think, like Bulent and Edep, the rest of the Kurds and Turks who have lived alongside each other all these years, through equally turbulent times – political coups, economic crises, destructive earthquakes – the only thing you can do is to just go on with your days – and nights.

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James Tressler is a writer whose books, including “Lost Coast D.A.,” “Conversations in Prague,” and “The Trumpet Fisherman and Other Istanbul Sketches,” can be found at Lulu.com. He lives in Istanbul.