By Ece Toksabay and Daren Butler

ANKARA (Reuters) -President Tayyip Erdogan risks losing support among nationalist Turkish voters in making peace with Kurdistan Workers Party militants, whose burning of weapons last week was dismissed by some as a stunt.

A backlash to Erdogan's call on Saturday for wide parliamentary support for the process underlines the challenge he faces in balancing nationalist and Kurdish demands, with a failure to do so potentially jeopardising the plan's success.

Erdogan's own future is also at stake: his term runs out in 2028 unless parliament backs the idea of early elections or a change in the constitution to extend a 22-year rule in which he has raised NATO member Turkey's profile on the world stage. He insists that personal political considerations play no role.

"The doors of a new powerful Turkey have been flung wide open," he said on Saturday of the symbolic initial handover of arms.

While his AKP party's far-right nationalist coalition partner MHP drove the peace process, smaller nationalist parties have condemned it. They recalled his years condemning the pro-Kurdish DEM party as being tied........

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