"Despite all obstructions, we insist on more democracy, more freedoms for everybody," Atalay told a news conference.

"We will speed up work in parliament on short and mid-term steps" outlined in a reform plan aimed at expanding Kurdish rights and ending a 25-year separatist insurgency in the southeast, he said.

The government's immediate steps, he said, will aim at passing laws to set up independent bodies dealing with discrimination, human rights violations and complaints against the security forces.

The reform drive, announced first in August, has faltered over the past month amid violent Kurdish protests, which broke out over allegations that jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan's prison conditions had deteriorated.

Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) added to the tensions when it killed seven soldiers in an ambush in northern Turkey last week.

The unrest surged following the constitutional court's ban on Turkey's main Kurdish party Friday for links to the PKK. Two people were killed Tuesday when a shopkeeper fired on a crowd of protestors hurling petrol bombs on stores in the southeastern town of Bulanik.

About 360 people have been arrested since the unrest broke last month, Atalay said.

He vowed the military would continue to pursue the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.

The government hopes broader rights for the Kurds will erode popular support for the PKK and encourage the rebels to lay down arms.

But many Kurdish activists argue the conflict cannot be resolved if Ankara continues to reject dialogue with the PKK.

The group took up arms in the Kurdish-majority southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives, led to gross rights violations on both sides and dealt a huge blow on the region's already meager economy.