The shootout occurred in the mountains in Sirnak province, which borders Iraq, after a group of rebels from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) ignored calls on them to surrender, the local governor said in a statement carried by Anatolia news agency.

Security operations in the region are continuing, it added.

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