The seven suspects, among them a woman, were alleged members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging a bloody separatist campaign in Turkey's southeast.

They were handed over to Turkish paramilitary police at a border crossing between Turkey and Iran in Hakkari province, local officials told Anatolia.

Taking advantage of mountainous frontiers difficult to guard, PKK rebels have found refuge in neighboring countries, mostly in Iraq, but also Iran and Syria.

Ankara and Tehran have in recent years intensified cooperation on security matters, including the PKK, after a chilly period during which the two sides accused each other of sheltering their respective dissidents.

The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives since the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara as well as the European Union and the United States, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984.