The move could rekindle hopes of a long-sought settlement to the nearly three-decades-old Kurdish insurgency in Turkey's southeast.

"We take into consideration the appeal of (Kurdish leader) Abdullah Ocalan and put a halt to our action from November 18," Deniz Kaya, a spokesman of jailed Kurdish prisoners, was quoted as saying by the pro-Kurdish news agency Firatnews.

Ocalan, who himself has been in solitary confinement in a remote prison island near Istanbul and barred from receiving visitors, called Saturday for an end to the hunger strike by his supporters.

"This action has achieved its goal. I want them to stop their action immediately and without any hesitation," Ocalan said, according to a statement publicised by his brother Mehmet who was allowed to meet him in prison the same day.

Rights groups and doctors had warned that many hunger strikers, most of whom refused food for more than two months, were at death's door.

Turkey's Islamic-rooted government, which was under mounting pressure on how to handle the hunger strikes, submitted a bill Tuesday to parliament to give Kurds the right to use their own language in court, a key demand of the prisoners.

But Ankara's move was initially deemed "inadequate" by defenders of the Kurdish cause, who are also calling for improved detention conditions for Ocalan, leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Ocalan was charged with treason and sentenced to hang in 1999, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2002 after Ankara abolished the death penalty as part of reforms required to join the European Union.

The PKK, designated as a terrorist organisation by Turkey as well as much of the international community, has been waging an armed campaign for self-rule in the Kurdish-majority southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.

The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), some of whose politicians joined the hunger strike, heeded Ocalan's call for an end to the action.

"The strikers have stopped their action since this (Sunday) morning. Some of them will be taken to hospital," BDP's co-chair Gulten Kisanak was quoted as saying by the state-run Anatolia news agency.

The strikers also included several BDP lawmakers and mayors.

The decision by hundreds of prisoners to drop their hunger strike underscored Ocalan's influence in the long-running Kurdish conflict despite his imprisonment.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan staunchly refused to address the hunger strike except to dismiss it as a "show" and "blackmail" aimed at obtaining Ocalan's release.

Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has boosted cultural and language rights for the country's Kurds since taking power a decade ago, but many have branded the reforms "too little, too late."

Estimates of the Kurdish population range from 20 million to 25 million, or nearly one-third of the Turkish population.