Eight militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led the bloody 25-year rebellion against Ankara, risk up to 20 years in jail for belonging to and promoting "a terrorist organisation," the sources said.

Another 22 people -- PKK sympathizers who had long taken refuge in neighbouring Iraq -- have been charged with collaborating with the PKK and spreading its propaganda, risking sentences of up to 15 years, they said.

The defendants were to answer the charges in separate trials, expected to begin soon in Diyarbakir, the largest city of the Kurdish-majority southeast.

The so-called "peace envoys" -- who totalled 34 people including four children -- crossed from Iraq on October 19 and turned themselves in to the authorities in a show of support for a government plan to expand Kurdish freedoms.

The initiative however has since faltered amid a series of unsettling events, including the banning of Turkey's main Kurdish political party in December, coupled with Kurdish violence.

Ankara had hoped to activate a two-pronged strategy -- improving Kurdish rights while keeping the PKK under military pressure to cajole rebels into laying down arms and leaving their bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.

The government says it remains committed to expanding Kurdish freedoms, but is yet to take action.

Kurdish activists however argue that efforts to end the conflict are doomed to fail if Ankara insists on rejecting dialogue with the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community.

The conflict has claimed more than 45,000 lives since the PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's southeast in 1984.