The 11 judges will reach a ruling against a backdrop of a government drive to expand Kurdish freedoms aimed at eroding support for a 25-year rebel insurgency. The government initiative has recently faltered amid renewed unrest in the Kurdish-majority southeast.

The deliberations in the case against the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which holds 21 seats in the 550-member parliament, could take several days or weeks.

Party leaders have warned that dissolving the DTP will fuel fresh tensions in the southeast and threatened to abandon parliament.

"The outcome of this case will be a democracy test for the country," DTP co-chairman Ahmet Turk said in parliament after the court convened.

"If the party is closed this will amount to blocking democratic political channels for the Kurdish people. Dissolving the DTP will amount to persistence on leaving the Kurdish problem unresolved," he said.

Turkey's chief prosecutor initiated the case in 2007, arguing the DTP had become a "focal point" of activities against national unity through its links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a bloody 25-year insurgency in the southeast.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community.

Turk said Monday party lawmakers would resign from their parliamentary seats if the court shuts down the party.

"We have reached an understanding that our presence in parliament will become meaningless" if the DTP is outlawed, he said.

The party says it has "no organic links" with the PKK, but insists the group should be considered an interlocutor in efforts to resolve the Kurdish conflict, a suggestion Ankara categorically rejects.

The DTP refuses to brand the PKK a terrorist group and party members often express support for the rebels and their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan. PKK banners are a fixture at DTP rallies.

Most recently, the party angered Ankara when it organised a hero's welcome in October for eight PKK militants who left their rear bases in neighbouring Iraq in a gesture of good will to Ankara's reform pledges. They were freed after surrendering to the Turkish authorities.

The DTP's other co-head, Emine Ayna, warned of more tensions, arguing that banning the DTP would undermine Ankara's efforts to end the Kurdish conflict.

"If the party is outlawed, the government would be deprived of the chance to call on people to lay down arms," she told the Radikal daily Monday.

Dissolving the DTP "would lead to a much worse climate than the one in the 80s and 90s" when the PKK insurgency began and reached its peak, she said.

Violent Kurdish protests flared in the southeast at the weekend, with one person shot dead, following claims that Ocalan's prison condition have deteriorated.

On Monday, seven soldiers were killed in an ambush in the northern province of Tokat, where leftist militants and, more rarely, PKK rebels are active. Officials are yet to name the suspected perpetrators of the attack.

The DTP was founded in 2005 as a successor to several Kurdish parties that were shut down for collaborating with the PKK.

The rebels took up arms against Ankara in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.