Bavarian state prosecutor Manfred Noetzel said Ayfer Kaya was captured near the Austrian border earlier this month.

Turkish media have reported that Kaya was romantically linked with Ocalan, founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and was with him in Rome before his arrest in February 1999 in Kenya.

Kaya had been sought on an international arrest warrant and Turkish authorities are reportedly preparing an extradition request.

Noetzel said in a statement that such a request would have to be presented along with the evidence against Kaya within 40 days and that the final decision on it would rest with the German government.

Several suspected PKK militants have been extradited to Turkey from Germany in the past year.

Ocalan, 59, has been serving a life sentence for treason and separatism as the sole inmate on a prison island in the Marmara Sea since his capture and conviction in 1999.

The PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish east and southeast.