In a tumultuous parliamentary session on Friday, Interior Minister Besir Atalay gave the first concrete details of a government project to grant country's estimated 12 million Kurds wider rights with the hope of ending a 25-year separatist campaign by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Among the measures were allowing Kurdish-majority towns to use their old Kurdish names, lifting restrictions on Kurdish to be used in political campaigning and allowing convicts to speak in Kurdish with visiting relatives.

The government will also create independent commissions to prevent discrimination and torture, Atalay said.

The announcement proved to be an anti-climax to the high expectations the government has been building for months with vague talk of "courageous steps", political commentator Murat Yetkin wrote in the liberal Radikal daily.

"If what Atalay announced are indeed steps that will develop (democratic) standards, these are good... but the PKK will not come down from its mountain stronghold just because there is an independent human rights commission and people can use their mother tongue in prisons."

The PKK, which has been fighting for self-rule in Turkey's southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives, on Saturday criticized the measures as "superficial" and "claptrap".

"The Kurdish question cannot be resolved without recognizing the will of the Kurdish people and holding dialogue with its interlocutors," the group said in a statement carried by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.

The PKK has long called on Ankara to halt military operations and agree to negotiations for a solution, which it says should include official recognition of the country's Kurds in the constitution.

The government categorically rejects dialogue with a group it labels a terrorist organization and says it will not let up on the military campaign against the rebels.

And even though Atalay underlined the need for a new, more liberal constitution, he ruled out any change to crucial articles that define Turkey as a unitarian state with Turkish as its language.

"This is the breaking point of the government initiative," Guneri Civaoglu said in the popular Milliyet daily.

"Kurdish activists have already said that the recent measures are not enough and a constitutional change, and in fact a new constitution, is in order to achieve more," he added.

Even though the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a comfortable parliamentary majority, it does not have the necessary 367 votes in the 550-seat parliament to change the constitution and is unlikely to get opposition support.

In Friday's parliamentary session, Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the opposition Nationalist Action Party, charged that the government was negotiating with "terrorists" while main opposition leader Deniz Baykal accused Erdogan of planning "to destroy and break Turkey up."

"The government is facing a psychological wall that will be very difficult to overcome. Public reaction to the planned measure are on the rise," Civaoglu said

Erdogan's government has been left alone in its Kurdish opening and is undertaking a huge risk as nationalist Turks raise their voices against the government project, Husnu Mahalli said in the popular Aksam daily.

"While Kurds might be happy about the Kurdish opening, nationalist Turks will become very angry at the government... and provoke the already tense atmosphere in the country," he said.

"Prime Minister Erdogan will be forced into making a choice between" Kurds and nationalist voters, he added.