Turkey's Erdogan to relax restrictions on Kurdish TV channels

The Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan intends to relax restrictions on private Kurdish television channels, it was confirmed on Monday.

According to the Turkish High Council for Radio and Television (RTUK), discussions on the implementation of the plans are already under way. The scheme is part of the 'democratic opening' announced this summer by Erdogan, intended to strengthen the rights of Turkey's Kurds. The scheme will focus particularly on cultural rights.

Private Kurdish channels will now be allowed to broadcast for 24 hours a day, instead of the current 45 minutes, according to reports in the Turkish media. Channels will no longer be obliged to provide Turkish subtitles and other editorial restrictions will also be lifted. But television stations will still be banned from transmitting programmes which teach the Kurdish language.

The government says it has increasing support from the Turkish population for its plans.

The move comes as part of wider plans to put an end to the 25 year conflict with the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a militant group regarded as a terrorist organisation by the state, which fights for the rights of Kurds.

'Everyone wants an end to the terror,' said the Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay last week. 'Everybody wants to have better democratic standards, nobody's against that.'

More than 35,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the Turkish army. The imprisoned head of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, submitted a peace plan to the government in Ankara last month.

Ocalan was sentenced to death in 1999 for high treason, though as a result of international pressure his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in 2002. He is now the only inmate of a prison on the island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara.

Signs of progress in making peace with Kurds

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with the Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk Wednesday suggesting a move towards reconciliation between the government and the main Kurdish political group, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which Turk chairs, according to a report in the Hurriyet newspaper.

"We are in the middle of a process, and I believe our hopes for the future have increased with today’s meeting," Erdogan told reporters.

Erdogan had refused to meet with the DTP since the 2007 elections because it did not condemn militant activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Turkey and the United States consider the militant group a terrorist organization.

The government's so-called "Kurdish move" is an attempt to resolve decades-old tensions between Kurds, who constitute at least a 12 million-strong minority in Turkey, and the Turkish government.

About 40,000 have died in 25 years of fighting between the PKK and the Turkish government. PKK guerrillas based in Northern Iraq were also a point of contention with the United States and the Iraqi government. Just this week, two PKK guerrillas were killed in eastern Turkey.