Holding up flags bearing Ocalan's portrait and banners proclaiming "Free Ocalan," and "Peace in Kurdistan," the demonstrators started a march from the city's railway station to a stadium where a meeting was due to take place.

"We are here to support the 18 hunger strikers" who are on the 32nd day of their protest in Strasbourg to push for private doctors to examine Ocalan, said Dogan Fitan, one of the organisers of Saturday's solidarity rally.

"We want independent doctors to be sent to the island of Imrali," where Ocalan is being held, he said, adding that the demonstrators had come from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Ocalan's lawyers say the 58-year-old has been experiencing breathing and skin problems, as well as pains severe enough to interrupt his sleep.

The leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Ocalan has been serving a life sentence for treason since 1999.

The PKK has waged a bloody separatist campaign in the mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984. It is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The protestors want to pressure the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, which was founded in 1949 and seeks to develop common and democratic principles throughout the continent, to send an "independent team" to examine Ocalan.

Council of Europe general secretary Terry Davis this week expressed concern over the health of the hunger strikers and said the organisation was closely following the conditions under which Ocalan was being detained.

The European Court of Human Rights in May 2005 ruled that Ocalan had not been given a fair trial in Turkey and called for a re-trial.