The 24-hour channel will also air programmes in Arabic, Farsi and Zazaki, a Kurdish dialect, the head of Turkish Radio and Television (TRT), Ibrahim Sahin, told the Aksam newspaper.

"Our objective is to reach not only our Kurdish and Arab citizens but also regional countries," Sahin said.

Turkey's southeast, which borders Iran, Iraq and Syria, is populated predominantly by Kurds as well as ethnic Arabs.

The channel was made possible by a law passed in June that eased restrictions on TRT's foreign-language broadcasts.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government is under pressure to back up military measures against armed Kurdish rebels fighting for self-rule in the southeast with political and economic overtures to the Kurdish community to erode popular support for separatism.

Seeking to boost Turkey's bid to join the European Union, TRT launched 30-minute weekly broadcasts in Kurdish in 2004, breaking a taboo in a country where public use of the language was banned less than 15 years ago.

The programmes, however, have been criticised for poor quality and shallow content.

Private local television and radio stations have also been allowed to air in Kurdish.

The government has said it will spend up to 15 billion dollars (10 billion euros) over five years on infrastructure projects and economic incentives in the southeast, Turkey's poorest and least-developed region.

The southeast has been the scene of bloody unrest since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.