Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) leader Ahmet Turk addressing the members of parliament during a debate at the Turkish Parliament in Ankara yesterday.

ANKARA: Turkey set out plans yesterday to expand the rights of its Kurdish population, including the creation of an independent body to investigate cases of torture and the loosening of restrictions on Kurdish language.

The government reform initiative is seen boosting Turkey’s hopes of European Union membership and stopping a conflict in which more than 40,000 people have died.

The initiative builds on steps which Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party (AKP) government has already taken to expand cultural rights for Kurds, such as the launch of a state-run Kurdish language television channel.

“An independent anti-discrimination commission will be established and a bill related to this will be sent to parliament,” Interior Minister Besir Atalay told parliament.

The commission will aim to prevent torture and mistreatment.

Atalay said Turkey needs a new, libertarian constitution as the existing one does not meet Turkey’s needs. The AK Party also plans to allow Kurdish to be used during political campaigning.

“The steps that will allow the political parties to address the people in different languages and dialects used by the citizens during election campaigns are among these,” Atalay said, listing the government reform moves.

Kurdish-majority towns will officially be able to regain their old Kurdish names replacing their new, Turkish names.

The reform is designed to encourage the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla group to disband. Kurds have long complained of discrimination at the hands of the state.

The PKK, branded a terrorist group by Ankara, Washington and the EU, launched an armed campaign in 1984 with the goal of creating an ethnic homeland for Kurds in Turkey’s southeast.

The chairman of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), which has long been accused of having links to the PKK, said the Turkish state needed a change of mentality.

“If the proposed solutions are serious, weapons can be laid down in three months,” DTP Chairman Ahmet Turk said. The main opposition parties fiercely oppose the reform process, arguing it threatens to undermine Turkey’s unity. The minister said Turkey would remain a unitary state, and the basic characteristics of the state would be untouched. Erdogan addressed the assembly later yesterday.

A small group of PKK rebels and sympathisers have already returned to Turkey and were released by the state authorities as a tentative step towards ending the conflict.

PKK violence has dwindled over the last couple of years after a series of Turkish air raids on their bases in northern Iraq, which has severely affected the group’s ability to stage cross-border raids into southeast Turkey.