DIYARBAKIR, Dec 12: About 50,000 Kurdish demonstrators gathered on Sunday in Diyarbakir, the heart of Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, to lend support to Turkey's EU membership bid and demand more freedoms.

Waving flags with the traditional Kurdish colours of yellow, red and green, the demonstrators, who poured into the city from all over the region, chanted slogans in favour of peace, as music bands sang songs in Kurdish.

The meeting, organized by Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party DEHAP, was titled "Yes to diversity, no to separatism." "We want to be part of Turkey with our Kurdish identity, we want EU membership," "Long live peace," read banners the demonstrators carried.

"Neither Sevres nor Lausanne, but a democratic republic," said one pancard referring to two key post-World War I documents, the first of which, the 1920 Sevres Treaty, envisaged an independent Kurdistan in what is today southeastern Turkey, while the second, the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, failed to guarantee cultural freedoms for the Kurds.

Some participants brandished portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of Kurdish militants who waged a bloody separatist war against Ankara between 1984 and 1999, and chanted slogans in favour of the outlawed rebels.

"The Kurds should be recognized as a founding element (of the republic) and their identity should be guaranteed by the constitution," Kurdish politician Hatip Dicle, who was released in June after 10 years in jail, told the rally.

"The EU should give Turkey an unconditional date for the start of accession talks and the Kurds should not be ignored," he said. The EU is set to give a green light for the start of membership talks with Ankara at a crunch summit on Thursday and Friday, but under tough conditions.

Turkey's sizeable Kurdish community, which has only recently been granted a measure of cultural rights, believes that closer ties between Turkey and the EU will help it win more freedoms. Many Turks, however, worry that expanded rights for the Kurds may encourage them to seek autonomy and even independence from Ankara. -AFP