Acting on a tip-off, anti-terror police arrested the suspect after watching him for about a week, seizing also plastic explosives and a detonator in the operation, the agency said.

The suspect was allegedly trained in camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in neighbouring Iraq, it said.

Two other people were arrested in the operation on suspicion of aiding the suspect.

Kurdish militants have carried out bomb attacks in Izmir and other urban centres in western Turkey in the past.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.