Erdogan is under pressure from the United States and at home to back up military measures against Kurdish rebels fighting the government with economic and political gestures to the sizeable Kurdish community to erode popular support for separatism.

Turkey's public television TRT is making preparations to inaugurate a special channel that will broadcast in Kurdish as well as Farsi and Arabic in the southeast, which borders Iran and Iraq, Erdogan told reporters.

TRT launched limited Kurdish-language broadcasts in 2004 in a taboo-breaking move aimed at boosting Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

The government is also planning to invest up to 15 billion dollars (9.6 billion euros) over five years in the Southeast Anatolia Project, an extensive network of dams and irrigation channels launched in the 1980s to boost prosperity in the impoverished region, Erdogan said.

The money will go to the construction of two dams, irrigation systems and roads in the southeast, and to demining large swathes of land along the Syrian border that will be then allocated to organic farming, he said.

"We have completed preparations with respect to funding," he added.

Washington increased pressure on Ankara to consider non-military measures to resolve the Kurdish conflict during a week-long Turkish offensive against bases of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq last month.

Kurdish activists have also called on the government to issue a general amnesty for PKK rebels to encourage them to lay down their arms.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.