Ocalan, who is in solitary confinement in a remote prison island near Istanbul after being convicted of treason, had called Saturday for an end to the strike by around 700 Kurdish inmates and a number of pro-Kurdish politicians.

"This action has achieved its goal. I want them to stop their action immediately," the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said in a statement released by his brother Mehmet who was allowed to meet the Kurdish leader in prison on Saturday despite an 18-month ban on visitors.

The decision to drop the hunger strike underscores Ocalan's influence in the long-running Kurdish conflict despite his imprisonment since 1999.

The PKK, labelled a terrorist organisation by Turkey and 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.

Fighting has surged in recent months and on Sunday, five Turkish soldiers and four Kurdish rebels were killed in clashes near the town of Semdinli not far from the Iranian and Iraqi borders, according to the local governor's office.

Turkey's Islamic-rooted government had been under mounting pressure over the hunger strike, which was launched on September 12 by inmates seeking a lifting on restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language and improved prison conditions for Ocalan.

Rights groups and doctors had warned that many of the protesters, most of whom refused food for more than two months, were close to death.

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

The strikers had included several BDP lawmakers and mayors.

Turkey's deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc welcomed the end of the strike.

"They did a right thing... They did not upset the Turkish people," he was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

He said Turkey was a democratic country governed by rule of law and that there was no need of such action. "Whatever the demands of the people, the government and politicians can any time raise and discuss them in parliament."

Ocalan, 62, had called for the protest action to stop after three meetings with Turkish intelligence officials over the last two months at the Imrali island prison where he is being held, the Radikal newspaper reported.

The government had submitted a bill to parliament on Tuesday to give Kurds the right to use their own language in court, one of the key demands raised by the protesters, although Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had insisted he would not bow to "blackmail".

The bill, which would also allow conjugal visits for Kurdish inmates, is expected to be put to the vote next week in the 550-seat parliament where Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds a comfortable majority.

Ankara's "gesture" was initially deemed "inadequate" by defenders of the Kurdish cause.

The AKP has boosted cultural and language rights for the country's Kurds since taking power a decade ago.

But it has failed to find a long-sought settlement to the nearly three-decades-old Kurdish insurgency in the southeast, which has in recent months seen a sharp upsurge in rebel attacks targeting security forces and also claiming civilian lives.

Estimates of the Kurdish population range from 15 million to 25 million, or nearly one-third of the Turkish population.

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.

Hunger strikes by Kurdish and leftwing groups in Turkey have claimed the lives of more than 100 people since 1996 and 2007.