The Democratic Society Party (DTP) is accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a bloody 25-year insurgency in Turkey's southeast and is listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.

Turkey's constitutional court is to begin final deliberations Tuesday on whether to outlaw the DTP, after one person was shot dead during weekend protests over the prison conditions of the PKK's jailed founder.

Speaking to reporters accompanying him on a trip to the United States, Erdogan accused the DTP of promoting the PKK as an interlocutor for the government in efforts to resolve the Kurdish conflict, the Sabah daily said.

"This amounts to identifying itself with the terrorist organisation," Erdogan said.

He said he "had no hope" the DTP would help the government in a drive to expand Kurdish freedoms in a bid to erode popular support for the PKK and encourage the rebels to lay down arms.

The DTP, which holds 21 seats in the 550-member parliament, says it has "no organic links" with the PKK.

In remarks published Monday, the party's co-leader Emine Ayna warned that a court ban on her party would fuel fresh tensions in the southeast.

"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 ahead of the court deliberations, which could last several weeks.

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

Ayna defended the PKK, which took up arms against Ankara in 1984 in a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives, as a movement that ensured that Kurds preserved their identity and won political rights.

A student was shot dead on Sunday as Turkish police clashed with demonstrators in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir who were protesting at the jail conditions of the PKK's leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Last month, Ocalan was moved to a new cell in the prison island of Imrali and other inmates were transferred there for the first time as Ankara sought to address Council of Europe criticism that Ocalan's solitary confinement was a human rights violation.

But Kurdish activists insist Ocalan's new cell is smaller and less comfortable, dismissing government assurances that it meets international norms and is only a few square centimeters smaller.

Ankara has invited Council of Europe officials to inspect the cell.