The demonstrators gathered in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil to demand the regional parliament take a stand and condemn Ankara over the actions of the Turkish forces.

"We call on the Kurds of Iraq to support their brothers in Turkey and their uprising," said a leader of the demonstration, Faiq Kawlabi.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily rejected criticism that an excessive use of force was to blame for the loss of life during Kurdish riots last week.

The military, meanwhile, vowed to finish off the PKK, whose rebels killed five soldiers and a policeman in the southeast on Wednesday, after a week of urban violence.

"Our security forces have displayed an attitude of tolerance unseen in other countries, at the risk of being wounded or killed," Erdogan said.

The violence which broke out on March 28 in Diyarbakir, the central city of the southeast, saw hundreds of Kurdish youths torch banks and public buildings, vandalize shops and attack the police with firebombs. Security forces opened fire to disperse the crowds.

At least 20 people have been killed in clashes in the southeast and in Istanbul, in the worst urban unrest in the country for years.

The PKK, branded a terrorist organisation in Turkey and the West, has been waging an armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast since 1984. The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives.