ANKARA, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- A total of 155 members of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) had left the banned group so far in 2007 thanks to the intervention of their families, local newspaper Today's Zaman reported on Tuesday.

    The recent "dialogue with families strategy" aiming to convince PKK rebels to lay down arms had yielded noticeable results, said the report, adding that 38 PKK members had voluntarily surrendered to the gendarmerie or the police.

    Special units were established in the gendarmerie and police headquarters where talks with the families of the PKK members were held to persuade the families to encourage their children up in the mountains to surrender, said the report.

    Those families were told that their children would be pardoned if they had not been involved in any attacks, it said.

    On Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the government and the Turkish Armed Forces had been working on a new "law of return" to encourage the PKK members to return home.

    According to the data from the Interior Ministry, 71 PKK members, including 17 women, surrendered in 2005, while another 110, including 16 women, surrendered in 2006.

    The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.