"I hope the president will veto this unfair action," Ahmet Turk, the chairman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency.

The bill, approved by parliament Thursday, is a move that "blocks the way of democratic politics" and hampers efforts for a peaceful resolution of the two-decade Kurdish conflict in the country, he said.

"We want to enter parliament," he said. "We want all of Turkey's problems, and primarily the Kurdish question, to be resolved on democratic ground."

The bill, which needs the approval of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to come into force, amends a constitutional provision relating to independent candidates.

It was passed a day after the DTP decided to field independents rather than run as a party in the July 22 election to bypass the 10-percent national threshold that allows parties access to parliament.

Once they are voted in as independents, the Kurdish deputies can regroup under the DTP banner.

Under the bill, the names of independent candidates will figure on the same ballot paper as all the parties in the running, contrary to current practice under which their names appear on separate voting slips.

The measure is widely seen as a bid to obstruct voters in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where many are illiterate or do not speak Turkish, and are likely to have trouble picking their candidate's name from the long list of parties and other independents.

Many Kurds have become legislators in Turkey as members of mainstream parties, but pro-Kurdish movements failed to overcome the 10-percent national threshold despite usually dominating in the southeast, where they traditionally win the local elections.

Kurdish parties are routinely accused of being instruments of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a bloody separatist insurgency in the southeast since 1984 that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

Turk said the new amendment would plunge the elections into "chaos" if the DTP was to field thousands of independent candidates.

"In what envelopes would they put the (huge) ballot papers then? We do not want to create chaos and instability, but we have this opportunity," he said.

President Sezer has a 15-day period to decide whether to return the bill to parliament or to sign it into law.