The Turkish military on Tuesday urged the judicial authorities to crack down on the lawyers of convicted Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, saying they were helping him run his outlawed separatist group from prison.

"The terrorist chief is running his organization [Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) now known as KONGRA-GEL] from prison. There is no other example of this in the world," Turkey's number two soldier, Ilker Basbug, told a regular monthly news briefing.

Ocalan was captured by Turkish undercover agents in Kenya in 1999, brought back to Turkey, and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life.

Basbug said that the numerous lawyers who visited him on the Imrali prison island, passed Ocalan's orders to his organization via the press, in contradiction to the ethical standards expected from their profession.

He also took issue with demands from the European Union - which Turkey hopes to be set on the road to join later this year - to improve rights for Kurds, saying they should not be treated as a minority.

"We do not like that citizens who do not consider themselves as a minority should be presented openly or implicitly as such," he said.

KONGRA-GEL ended a five-year unilateral ceasefire with the Turkish government in June escalating tension in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where it waged a bloody 15-year campaign for self-rule from 1984 to 1999. Clashes with government security forces have resumed.

The Kurdish people are scattered over four countries - Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They want their own homeland called Kurdistan.

As a large and distinct group with their own language and culture they are neither Arabs, Persians, nor Turks and are seen as a political threat by all four of the countries they inhabit.