Hilmi Aydogdu was found guilty of sedition. He went on trial last year while regional chairman of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Diyarbakir, largest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, adjacent to Iraq.

Turkey has issued harsh warnings over the future of the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, which the Iraqi Kurds want to incorporate into their autonomous region.

Aydogdu was charged after the media quoted him as saying last year Turkey's Kurds would "consider a Turkish attack on Kirkuk as an attack on Diyarbakir."

Defence lawyers said they would appeal the sentence.

Kirkuk has a large population of Sunni and Shiite Arabs, as well as Turkmen.

Turkey sees itself as the traditional protector of the Turkmen people who, together with the Arabs, have complained of being bullied by the Kurds.

Turkey's Kurdish community has long sought greater autonomy, and the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community, has waged a 23-year campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey.