Turkey has begun restoring names of Kurdish villages and is considering allowing religious sermons to be made in Kurdish as part of reforms to answer the grievances of the ethnic minority and advance its EU candidacy, Reuters reported.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said his government will push democratic reforms to address decades-old grievances from the Kurdish population and help end a 25-year conflict between the state and separatist guerrillas.
Erdogan, who has given few details on the measures and their timeframe, is seeking public, military and parliamentary support for his "Kurdish initiative", aimed at persuading Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels to lay down arms and end an insurgency that has killed some 40,000 people.
The conflict has long hampered Ankara's European Union membership bid and weighed on the local economy.
Analysts say some of the expected measures will require difficult legal and constitution reforms for which Erdogan needs broad consensus, but the main opposition parties have rejected a call for talks, arguing the process threatened Turkey's unity.
Turkey's estimated 12 million Kurds out of a population of 72 million have long complained of discrimination by the state.
Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party, which first came to power in 2002, has taken some steps to expand political and cultural rights for Kurds, partly under pressure from the EU.
Haberturk daily said the provincial council of Diyarbakir in the mainly Kurdish southeast had restored the old Kurdish name to a hamlet and the state-appointed provincial governor had not objected. The governor had challenged similar moves by the council in court in the past.
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