A court in Diyarbakir, the central city of the predominantly Kurdish southeast, charged DTP provincial chairmain Hilmi Aydogdu with "inciting hatred" and jailed him pending trial, judicial officials said.

Earlier, in the eastern city of Van, DTP provincial chairman Ibrahim Sunkur and another party activist, Abdulvahap Turan, were jailed pending trial late Thursday, Anatolia news agency reported.

The authorities acted after PKK documents and banners as well as banned books by jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan were seized in the city's DTP office.

All three men are members of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), the main political movement of Turkey's Kurdish minority.

The media quoted Sunkur as saying this week that Turkey's Kurds would "consider a Turkish attack on Kirkuk as an attack on Diyarbakir."

Ankara has issued harsh warnings to the Iraqi Kurds over the future of the ethnically mixed, oil-rich Kirkuk in northern Iraq, which they fear the Iraqi Kurds want to incorporate into their autonomous region.

The city is also home to Arabs and Turkish-backed Turkmens.

Aydogdu's remarks provoked a harsh reaction here at a time when Iraqi Kurds are accused of supporting Turkish Kurd rebels, by providing them with explosives for bomb attacks across the border in Turkey.

The rebels have taken refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq.

Ankara has threatened a military incursion into northern Iraq to crack down on rebel bases if Baghdad and Washington fail to act against them.

The rebels belong to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody 22-year campaign for self-rule in Turkey's southeast and is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.

Ankara fears that Iraqi Kurds may break away from Baghdad and embolden the PKK to step up its campaign in Turkey, which has already resulted in more than 37,000 deaths.