The defendants are accused of crimes including membership in an illegal armed group, spreading its propaganda, undermining Turkey's territorial integrity and violating laws on public demonstrations.
Turkey on Monday began trying 151 politicians and activists, including 12 elected mayors, charged with links to Kurdish rebels in a case testing a European Union-inspired drive to broaden Kurdish rights.
The defendants are accused of crimes including membership in an illegal armed group, spreading its propaganda, undermining Turkey's territorial integrity and violating laws on public demonstrations, according to a 7,500-page indictment.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to address the grievances of Kurds, who make up about 20% of Turkey's population, to help end a 26-year war with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels that has claimed 40,000 lives, mostly Kurdish.
But Turkey has also cracked down on Kurdish groups. More than 1,000 people are in jail on charges that link them to the PKK, according to the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), Turkey's only pro-Kurdish grouping in Parliament.
Diplomatic sources said the EU is monitoring the trial in Diyarbakir, the mainly Kurdish southeast's biggest city.
Among the defendants is Osman Baydemir, Diyarbakir's popular mayor.
The European Commission releases its report next month on Turkey's progress towards meeting EU membership criteria.
Last year, it criticised the use of anti-terror laws to prosecute people for expressing non-violent opinions on Kurdish issues.
The BDP succeeded the Democratic Society Party (DTP), banned by Turkey's top court in December for links with the PKK.
"We see this trial as an attempt to break our will," Ahmet Turk, the former DTP chairman who lost his parliamentary seat after the party was shut, said outside of the courthouse.
"At a time when we are seeking peace, it's unacceptable that our friends are being held in jail for 18 months only for expressing their thoughts and opinions."
The charges against the defendants, 103 of whom are in detention, stem from wiretapped phone conversations or include the alleged roles they played organising public demonstrations that often turned violent, lawyers have said.
The trial is expected to last months because of the number of defendants. A special courtroom that can hold 500 people was built for the proceedings.
The BDP denies outright links with the PKK, but espouses the same proposals as the rebels for the ending the war, including an amnesty for the fighters and a negotiated settlement.
For its part, the PKK has said the arrest of Kurdish politicians has made a political settlement of the conflict more remote. The rebels called off a one-sided ceasefire on June 1 and fighting intensified until it resumed the truce on August 13.
The PKK has been based in northern Iraq since the 1990s.
As US forces prepare to withdraw from Iraq next year, renewed fighting between the PKK and Turkey could threaten stability in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region that has been largely spared the violence that has plagued much of the country since the 2003 US invasion.
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