"A detainee, if he likes, may use another language (than Turkish) to defend himself against charges brought against him in the court," according to the bill proposed by the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The bill would also allow conjugal visits for Kurdish inmates, which have been banned thus far.

The Turkish government is under growing pressure over how to tackle the hunger strike by around 700 Kurdish prisoners, which is now in its 63rd day.

The strikers are calling for the lifting of restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language but their main demand is the improvement of detention conditions for Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The 62-year-old leader of the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey as well as much of the international community, has been kept in solitary confinement in a prison on the island of Imrali off Istanbul. Ocalan was charged with treason and sentenced to hang in 1999 but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 after Ankara abolished the death penalty under pressure from the European Union, which Turkey is aspiring to join.

Several politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) have also joined the hunger strike recently.

It was not immediately clear when the bill would be discussed in parliament, where the AKP holds a comfortable majority.

A parliamentary source told AFP that the debate could start only if a majority of Kurdish activists abandon their hunger strike to reciprocate the "gesture of the governing party."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP government has expanded cultural and language rights for the Kurds since taking power a decade ago but many have branded reforms for the Kurds "too little, too late."