Under the scheme, a state university in the Kurdish-populated southeast of the country will set up an institute to teach postgraduate studies in Kurdish as well as Farsi, Arabic and Syriac, Yusuf Ziya Ozcan, the head of the the Higher Education Board, told reporters here.

"This is a solution that encompasses not just Kurdish but also other languages. This is the model we will use if other universities want to serve citizens who speak different languages," Ozcan was quoted by Anatolia as saying.

The Kurdish language remained banned in Turkey for decades until earlier this decade when the government allowed for Kurdish-language television and radio broadcasts and Kurdish-language courses at private institutions as part of reforms to join the European Union.

Ozcan said the aim of the institute at the Mardin Artuklu University was to "train academics that we will need when there are undergraduate studies at universities."

Allowing Kurdish-language university studies has long been touted by the press as one of the steps that the government would take as part of its planned reforms to boost the rights of its Kurdish minority, in the hope of bringing an end to the armed campaign by Kurdish rebels.

No details of the reforms have been released, but the government has ruled out a general amnesty for Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels who have been fighting for Kurdish self-rule since 1984 in a conflict that has has claimed 45,000 lives.

It has so far failed to draw support from opposition parties which argue that broader Kurdish rights would pave the way for Turkey's disintegration.

The army, on the other hand, has warned that the planned reforms must not endanger unity, underlining a constitutional article that describes Turkey as being an indivisible whole with Turkish as its language.