Police imposed strict security measures after nationalists threatened to disrupt the two-day event, designed to promote ways of ending a conflict that has long impeded Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.

Officers searched participants at the entrance of the venue, the private Bilgi University, and several dozen riot police were on guard outside the campus.

More than 45 Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals, politicians and journalists of various political convictions were taking part in the conference, entitled "The Kurdish question in Turkey: ways for a democratic settlement".

Organizers said the conference could adopt a final declaration on Sunday, appealing to the government for more reforms to resolve the conflict, which has claimed some 37,000 lives since the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) began fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984.

The conflict has led to allegations of gross human rights violations on both sides, ravaged the already meager economy of the region and forced hundreds of thousands of already poor peasants to migrate into urban slum areas.

A period of relative calm in the region was shattered in June 2004 when the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the United States, called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire with the army.

Since then, Kurdish militants have also carried out deadly bombings targeting civilians in western Turkey.

Speakers at the conference acknowledged significant progress in improving the rights of the Kurds, driven by Turkey's EU membership aspirations, but said more reforms were needed to fully guarantee the minority's cultural and political freedoms.

Many urged the PKK to lay down its arms.

"Some bans (on Kurdish rights) have been lifted, but the essence of the problem is still there," former culture minister Ercan Karakas said.

"The Kurdish question is a question of democracy... The government only makes promises that lead to nowhere."

Ankara has in recent years lifted emergency rule in the southeast and allowed the Kurdish language to be taught at private courses and used in television and radio broadcasts.

It is also compensating villagers who have been displaced and suffered material losses during the conflict.

Activists, however, maintain that the reforms were half-hearted moves undertaken under EU pressure and are calling for bolder steps, including a general amnesty for PKK militants.

In a landmark speech in August 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised that the Kurdish conflict would be resolved with "more democracy". But the government has since failed to introduce any concrete measures and PKK militants have intensified their attacks.

"There is a crisis of confidence between the two sides," Kurdish rights campaigner Sertac Bucak said. "There is a Kurdish phobia in Turkey."

He argued that the ultimate solution lay in a federal settlement that would grant the Kurds autonomy.

"There are also things the Kurds must do," Bucak said. "The PKK should unconditionally renounce violence because violence breeds violence and plays into the hands of those who favour the status quo."