The 34 people, among them eight Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels, from the group's camp in the Qandil mountains, were taken in for questioning as soon as they walked through the Habur border gate.

The remaining 26, including four children and nine women, are Turkish Kurds from the UN-run Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq.

The camp holds some 12,000 people who left Turkey in the 1990s at the peak of the deadly conflict between the army and the PKK.

Four prosecutors sent to the border area by special order were to determine whether these people had committed any crimes and whether they should be taken into custody.

Turkish officials have said the group was welcome if they were in Turkey to turn themselves in, but senior PKK commander Murat Karayilan told a pro-Kurdish news agency on Sunday that the group's aim was not surrender.

The banned PKK announced last week that it would send "peace groups" from Iraq and Europe, on a proposal from their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, to help advance the government's bid to resolve the conflict through democratic reforms.

Since August, the government has been trying to build public support for a initiative to grant Kurds greater rights and try to erode support for the PKK.

More than 45,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK picked up arms in Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast and east.