Erdogan, who has tarred the PKK and IS with the same extremist brush, has signed Turkey up to airstrikes against IS in Syria.
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PKK attacks have been increasingly continuing since the start of a Turkish military operation against PKK targets in June.
The PKK has hit back hard, killing scores of soldiers and police in a string of attacks in the mainly Kurdish southeast, triggering reprisal attacks by nationalist mobs on Kurdish parties and businesses in other regions.
A giant red Turkish flag held aloft by the demonstrators carpeted the crowd, covering a distance of over a kilometre.
Metin Feyzioglu, head of the Bar Association, said that while the PKK was “a terrorist organisation… the fight against terror must remain on legitimate ground within the rule of law”.
Ahmet Ugur, a 59-year-old retired policeman, called for the reintroduction of the death penalty for killers of police or soldiers.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the election, but lost the parliamentary majority and couldn’t form a government alone for the first time since 2002. “There is no obstacle for this but this process has unfortunately been torpedoed by the political party in parliament which is backed by the separatist terrorist organization”, Erdoğan said.
Fatma Kurthasan, the 81-year-old mother of an army colonel stationed in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, said she was anxious about her son’s safety.
The group blamed Erdoğan and the AKP he founded for the collapse of the peace process.
The rebels do not give figures for their dead.
There are fears the country is returning to the armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s that killed 40,000 people.
Jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving a life sentence in İmralı Island prison, had at least since late 2012 played a central role in the government-led peace process aimed at ending the three-decade long conflict between Turkey’s security forces andPKK militants.
The militants’ demands have since shifted to gaining greater autonomy for Kurds and broader cultural rights.
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The remarks by the commander come as Turkey prepares for snap elections on November 1 and findings of public opinion polls indicate that the AKP will fall short of the votes needed to form a single-party government in the elections.
