By Hidir Goktas

ANKARA, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Pro-Kurdish lawmakers will not be working to win a state when they take up seats in Turkey's parliament, but for more democracy and an end to separatist violence, one of the newly elected MPs said on Friday.

Turkey's parliament reconvenes on Saturday with an oath-taking ceremony after July 22 elections in which voters handed a fresh five-year mandate to the ruling AK Party.

The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) has 20 seats in the 550-member assembly, the first time supporters of more rights for Turkey's large ethnic Kurdish minority have been represented in parliament for more than a decade.

"The Kurds don't want a state, they want democracy. If the Kurds send candidates to Ankara, those with power should draw a lesson from this," DTP deputy Sirri Sakik told Reuters in an interview.

"We want to solve problems all together within a united Turkey... We want to express our identity under the guarantee of the constitution and the laws and to find a formula, by consensus, for removing weapons and violence from the agenda."

Other DTP deputies made similar calls for dialogue and compromise during the election campaign.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government, which is seeking European Union membership, has eased some curbs on Kurdish language and culture, but the DTP says it must go much further.

However, many Turks remain deeply suspicious of the DTP, believing it is just a mouthpiece of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) whose guerrillas are battling security forces in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.

DIALOGUE

Sakik said the DTP sought dialogue and compromise, not confrontation. He said the new parliament, where Turkish nationalists will also be represented, provided a chance to hammer out a consensus on resolving the Kurdish issue.

"We have to be able to speak to one another. If we can do this, we can solve the problems," he said.

Sakik said he did not expect any problems at Saturday's ceremony.

In 1991, Kurdish lawmakers from a forerunner of the DTP that was later banned caused an uproar when they entered the chamber wearing the colours of the PKK and tried to take their oath of office in the Kurdish language.

The lawmakers were later stripped of their parliamentary immunity, tried and jailed for supporting the PKK.

Turkey and its Western allies class the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK launched its armed campaign in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey. After a relative lull, violence has flared up again over the past year or two.

Sakik said the DTP was "ready to take risks" to help end the violence, noting that it had helped forge a 2006 ceasefire. Turkey's military has ignored the PKK's unilateral ceasefires over the years, saying it does not bargain with terrorists.

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