"We carried out an inquiry and have established that it is not true that Ocalan is treated differently to other inmates," Zafer Uskul, president of the parliamentary human rights commission, told television channel NTV.

"His conditions meet international norms and are even better."

Turkey's justice ministry also published photos on Friday to show that Ocalan's jail conditions were the same as those of other inmates in high-security prisons.

Reports last weekend that he had complained about conditions following the transfer of five other inmates to the prison triggered daily protests across Turkey.

The 61-year-old founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who is serving a life sentence on Imrali island, said his breathing had been affected after he was placed in a much smaller cell.

He had been the sole inmate of the high-security prison until the new prisoners arrived in mid-November.

Uskul dismissed the claim that the new cell was much smaller.

The new inmates were brought to the prison in the Sea of Marmara, northwestern Turkey, after Council of Europe criticism that Ankara was violating Ocalan's human rights by keeping him in solitary confinement.

He was condemned to death for treason and separatism in 1999.

The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001 following Turkey's abolition of capital punishment as part of reforms to embrace European Union norms.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community. It took up arms in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.

Meanwhile in the southern Turkish city of Adana, which has a large Kurdish community, two men suffered minor injuries on Friday when a bomb exploded close to a park, media reported.

The 25- and 28-year-old were taken to hospital but were not in a serious condition, Anatolia news agency said.