TUNCELI, Turkey -- "Human Rights complaints and wishes box" reads the label on a small, metallic post-box mounted outside the town governor's office in Turkey's war-ravaged southeast.

Surrounded by craggy peaks, the strategic riverside town of Tunceli was once the focus of battles between Turkey's powerful army and the separatist guerrillas of Abdullah Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Roadside security checks, house-to-house searches, and interrogation of "terrorist" sympathizers became widespread amid decades of emergency rule which the security forces said was needed to stop Ocalan turning turkey's southeast into a Kurdish homeland, Reuters reported.

With intense fighting reduced to sporadic clashes, Ankara says the strict curbs imposed by the governor, who has coordinated emergency rule in the province backed by 20,000 troops, have been lifted as Turkey implements EU-backed reforms.

Hence the appearance of the box.

But while welcoming its arrival, few of Tunceli's 25,000 residents venture across the wide, sun-baked square fronting the governor's HQ, dominated by a statue of Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, himself an army commander.

"It's a positive step, there was nothing like this before ...

but I wonder if someone posting an envelope there would actually have his complaint dealt with," said Huseyin Aygun, a Tunceli lawyer specializing in human rights issues. "He might even feel he's in danger."

With a dwindling band of rebels holed up in the mountains, the residents of Tunceli, dominated by Kurds of the Alevi sect, say the town is starting to feel like any other.

Armored patrols are at a minimum, teams of plain-clothes policemen are less visible and tea gardens are thriving along the lush banks of the Munzur River, once the stalking ground of armed militia and camouflaged conscripts.

--- More Rights for Kurds --- EU-inspired reforms which Turkey approved in July set to increase language and cultural rights for the country's 12 million Kurds and have further raised morale in the battle-worn region.

But the people of Tunceli have long memories.

"It is difficult to believe that things can change so quickly. It hasn't sunk in for many of us," said Ahmet, a fruit-seller, as a small convoy of armored trucks rumbled back from another incident-free patrol along Tunceli's narrow valley.

A committee given the task of examining the contents of the governor's post-box says only a handful of Tunceli's citizens have exercised their right to complain.

"There's not much interest so far, just a few requests," Mused Yasar Cicek of the provincial human rights coordination board.

Some people had asked to be allowed to return to hundreds of villages evacuated during the recent conflict.

"Other demands they posted were not of great importance," he added.

Security sources say as few as 80 PKK guerrillas and fighters of the Maoist-Leninist Tikko Roam the peaks around Tunceli, down from more than 1,500 just four years ago.

But abuses and torture, of which Turkey's security forces are often accused, continues, said Aygun as he sipped his lemonade in a Tunceli cafe.

--- Miles Apart --- While the odd mini-bus driver may complain of an overly-zealous ID check, Turkish soldiers seldom emerge from the seven outposts flanking a newly-paved 80km (50 miles) road traversing hills to the nearby province of Elazig.

But 150km (93 miles) to Elazig's southeast life is not so straightforward.

Diyarbakir, Turkey's largest mainly Kurdish city with a population of over one million, is still under emergency rule.

Nestled in a wide plain of sunflowers and cotton, the thoroughfares of dusty, crowded Diyarbakir offer little respite from the searing summer heat -- temperatures can reach some 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) before plummeting to well below zero in the winter months.

Unemployment is rife among the thousands who have fled outlying villages amid the violence of the decades-long conflict. Many workers drink tea in packed street cafes while factory gates remain tightly shut.