ISTANBUL, Aug 3 (AFP) - 4h09 - After 28 years of exile in Europe, Kurdish-language writer Mehmed Uzun has returned to Turkey at a pivotal time in its history, when he believes Turks and Kurds must choose between peaceful coexistence and a return to violence.Turkey has changed despite everything. Despite the obstacles and conservative reactions, it is sliding quickly towards Europe, said the 53-year-old author, who moved to Istanbul in June with his wife and two children.

"Intellectual voices like my own must accelerate the process."

After living in Sweden since 1977, Uzum travelled several times through the southeastern part of Turkey, the land of his birth and the heart of the Kurdish region, before setting down his bags for good in Istanbul.

"In their eyes I could see intense pain, suffering, but also patience and hope," he recalled. "Above all, I saw people trying to build a new social order ... that they are rediscovering their cultural heritage."

The region was the theatre of a 1984-1999 war, which took nearly 37,000 lives, between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Uzun's return to his roots has prompted a time of reflection for the writer, who spent more than half of his life in Europe and describes himself as "Kurdish, Turkish and Scandinavian."

"I want to do justice to the pain of these people and create a literature that would be right for them, that would help them to put up with their lives," the author said, adding that he had learned more from his own people than "in all the universities" of Europe he had frequented during his long exile.

After calling for the recognition of Kurdish cultural rights and being accused of "separatism", he had his first spell in prison in 1972 before breaking parole and gaining political refugee status in Sweden in 1977.

Stripped of his citizenship the day after a military coup in 1980 before gaining it back in 1992, Uzun's books have earned him a dozen lawsuits. The latest case ended when he was acquitted in 2003.

During his time in Scandinavia, the young militant has become a prolific writer, author of a dozen Kurdish language novels and essays, which have made him a founding member of modern Kurdish literature.

"When I began to write, I had nothing in front of me except the spoken word, forbidden, banned from public life for such a long time that my parents' vocabulary contained no more than 150 or 200 words," he remembered.

"I had to create a modern romance language by rediscovering the oral traditions, music, fables, different dialects," which form Kurdish culture, he explained.

But the author refused to be labelled a "Kurdish writer," or to be seen as an "innocent victim."

"If I had not bathed in European cultural heritage, I would not be the author I am," he said. "It is the mixture of East and West that founded my life as an author."

Asked about the resurgence of violence since spring in Turkey's southeast, where fighting had practically ended after a unilateral PKK ceasefire from 1999-2004, Uzum does not disguise his concern.

"Arms have resumed their role in recent times, and people are beginning to live in anxiety," he said.