The hearing, held in the northern city of Corum for security reasons, was closed to the press as one of the defendants is a 14-year-old minor.

The prosecutor has called for nine of the suspects to be jailed for life with no chance of parole on charges of premeditated murder over the May 4 carnage at the village of Bilge in Mardin province.

The nine men and the underage suspect also face jail sentences of up to 200 years for the 10 people injured in the attack.

The remaining suspect, who was not believed to be among the gunmen but who was found to be in possession of hand grenades during the investigation, risks up to 17 years in prison.

In the attack, which shocked the country, masked gunmen stormed into Bilge, a small Kurdish village near the Syrian border, and opened fire just after a Muslim preacher had completed the wedding ceremony.

It was claimed at the time that the carnage was motivated by long-running hostilities between rival families.

But the indictment said the prosecutor had found no evidence to support the claim.

In remarks published in the liberal Taraf newspaper at the weekend, the son of the chief suspect on trial said his father ordered the attack after discovering that his wife was conducting an affair with a neighbour.

Most of the suspects on trial are members of the "village guard", a Kurdish militia force recruited by the government to help in the fight against separatist Kurdish rebels in the southeast. They used government-supplied arms in the attack.

Settling disputes through violence are frequent in Turkey's Kurdish-populated regions, where feudal traditions persist.