The celebrations, held under the slogan "A Strong Army, A Strong Turkey", come nearly two months after army chief Ilker Basbug complained of a media campaign to discredit and weaken the military.

The biggest parade was organized in capital Ankara, where some 8,000 troops -- nearly double the number in previous celebrations -- marched in Ankara before President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Basbug and senior generals.

Nearly 50 aircraft, among them F-4 and F-16 fighter jets, flew past the arena and dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles rolled by in a display designed to underline the army's strength and the country's unity, as hundreds of flag-waving people applauded.

Similar ceremonies, marking Turkey's victory against invading Greek troops in 1922, were held in several other cities, among them Turkey's biggest city Istanbul and Diyarbakir, the regional capital of the mainly Kurdish southeast.

In recent weeks, the government has been trying to win public support for planned reforms to expand the freedoms of the Kurdish community and end a bloody conflict with Kurdish rebels.

Ankara has remained tight-lipped on the content of the plan, but has stressed that democratic reforms lay at the heart of ending the fighting with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Some 45,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK picked up arms for self-rule in the southeast.

The Kurdish conflict "cannot be resolved only through military means", Erdogan said in a televised monthly address to the nation on Thursday. "It is a social, economic and cultural issue... Beyond all, it is an issue of democracy."

On Tuesday, Basbug warned that the planned reforms must not endanger the country's unity and ruled out contact with the PKK.

He also underlined a constitutional article that decribes Turkey as being an indivisible whole with Turkish as its language.

The army "respects cultural diversity", but opposes the politicisation of the issue, Basbug said in his Victory Day message.

Opposition parties remain hostile to the plan, arguing that broader rights for the country's Kurds will pave the way for Turkey's disintegration.

A senior ruling party lawmaker said last week the Kurdish language could be introduced as an elective course in Turkish schools as part of the plan.

Media reports say the government may also consider restoring the Kurdish names of villages that have been renamed, lifting a ban on using Kurdish in political posters and modifying the definition of Turkish nationality in the constitution.

Turkey has in recent years granted the Kurds a series of cultural liberties, including the launch of a public Kurdish-language television channel, but it has failed to encourage the rebels to lay down arms.

Sunday's massive parade comes after Basbug slammed press reports of an alleged plot by an army colonel to topple the government and denounced what he called a "growing and organised" smear campaign against the military.

His outburst coincided with a government-sponsored law that allowed officers to be tried in civilian courts.

The Turkish army, which has unseated four governments since 1960, has seen its powers limited as part of reforms in recent years to boost Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

Although it has often clashed with Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government which came to power in 2002, the military has kept a relatively low profile in the political arena in the past two years.