"We will make efforts to resolve the Kurdish problem through democracy and reconciliation," their leader Ahmet Turk said on CNN Turk television. "We want an end to violence and confrontation."

Sixty members of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) contested the polls as independents, a strategy designed to circumvent a 10-percent national threshold that has kept outside parliament Kurdish parties campaigning for the rights of Turkey's largest minority.

The Kurdish candidates campaigned for reconciliation between Turks and Kurds, calling on Ankara to abandon military action against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and expand Kurdish freedoms to pave the way for a peaceful settlement of the 23-year conflict.

Drawing on strong support in the mainly Kurdish southeast, 24 of them will win seats, according to unofficial results carried by CNN Turk.

The are expected to regroup under the DTP banner once in parliament.

Among them is at least one former member of the defence team of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, accused of being an intermediary between the rebel chief and his troops.

The PKK stepped up violence this year, sending nationalist sentiment into a frenzy and prompting calls for a military incursion into neighbouring northern Iraq, where the rebels take refuge.

Many Turkish Kurds have become legislators on mainstream party tickets, but the first stint in parliament of militant Kurdish politicians ended in disaster in 1994 when their immunity was lifted on charges of aiding the PKK.

The group camped inside parliament for two days to avoid arrest, but eventually gave up. Some of them, including human rights award winner Leyla Zana, were jailed; others went into exile and one joined the PKK.

Since then, Turkey, under European Union pressure, has granted the Kurdish minority a measure of cultural freedom and lifted emergency rule in the southeast.

Kurds, however, still complain of discrimination and ask for Kurdish to be taught in schools and allowed to be used in all fields of public life.