Serbia and Turkey

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7225727.stm

Whats good for the goose is apparently genocide for the gander. The Turks have been beating the crap out of the Kurds for a large swathe of the 20th and all the 21st century. According to this website, 12,000 have died during this altercation. According to this story, almost exactly the same number died in the conflict between the Christian Serbs and Muslims in Kosovo, according to the US state department (the Red cross casualty stats have far fewer dying, 3,368 civilians: 2,500 Albanians, 400 Serbs, and 100 Roma).

It is instructive to note the difference in how astonishingly different these two cases are being dealt with. The EU has made virtually no protests on behalf of the Kurds, and has made absolutely no noises about recognising a Kurdish homeland in South Eastern Turkey. Indeed, the very idea of a Kurdistan involving part of Turkeys soveriegn territory is completely anathema to European capitals. They have proscribed the PKK, the main Kurdish separatist movement, and condemned it as a terrorist organisation.

Contrast with this the treatment of the Muslim Albanian Kosovans. The KLA, which according to the same story I quoted above, murdered about 1850 and kidnapped a further 1450 who are missing. This is vastly more than have been killed by the PKK. The Kosovans though are the toast of the town, and have been given the green light by most European governments to prepare for independence. This despite the fact that NATO and the EU consider Kosovo to be riddled with both Islamists and gangsters of the very nastiest types.

Only Russia dissents from this consensus view. So what can we deduce from this? Why are Kurds the scum of the earth, who don't deserve a homeland, and Kosovo Albanians Gods gift who must be presented with their own state by lopping off soveriegn territory from Serbia? I don't pretend to know the answer to this, by the way, as I don't subscribe to any of the usual Serbian conspiracy theories, but I am genuinely curious why there is such an enormous disparity in the treatment of the two cases.

I usually have at least some idea why countries behave the way they do, but on this occasion I'm genuinely mystified.