ANKARA: Turkey’s plan to expand language rights for Kurds and prevent discrimination is unlikely to persuade armed rebels to lay down arms and risks heightening nationalist anger at the government for caving into “terrorists”, analysts said yesterday.

In a tumultous parliamentary session on Friday, Interior Minister Besir Atalay gave the first concrete details of a government project to grant country’s estimated 12 million Kurds wider rights with the hope of ending a 25-year separatist campaign by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Among the measures were allowing Kurdish-majority towns to use their old Kurdish names, lifting restrictions on Kurdish to be used in political campaigning and allowing convicts to speak in Kurdish with visiting relatives.

The government will also create independent commissions to prevent discrimination and torture, notably in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast, Atalay said.

The announcement proved to be an “anti-climax” to the high expectations the government has been building for months with vague talk of “courageous steps” and the need to “end bloodshed and suffering”, political commentator Murat Yetkin wrote in the liberal Radikal daily.

“If what Atalay announced are indeed steps that will develop (democratic) standards, these are good...but the PKK will not come down from its mountain stronghold just because there is an independent human rights commission and people can use their mother tongue in prisons,” he added.

The PKK says Turkey must end military operations, give the country’s Kurds officials recognition in the constitution, allow Kurdish-language education and agree to negotiations for a solution for the rebels to end their campaign for self-rule in Turkey’s southeast which has claimed some 45,000 lives since 1984.