The members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were found by security forces in a forest area in the Koycegiz district of the Mediterranean Mugla province, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Five suspected PKK militants were killed and security forces are pursuing two more who managed to get away, it added. One Turkish soldier was slightly wounded.

The Koycegiz region is particularly popular with British and German tourists due to its picturesque lake of the same name. The hugely popular river resort of Dalyan is nearby.

Such clashes are frequent in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey but are extremely rare in the southwest of the country, one of its key tourist regions and usually quiet.

The PKK has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984 which initially focused on seeking independence for Turkey's Kurdish minority but now puts more emphasis on greater rights and autonomy.

Tens of thousands of lives have been lost in the violence and the PKK is designated as a terror group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

The Turkish army has been waging a relentless campaign in the last months to eradicate the PKK, including air raids against the group's bases in northern Iraq.

Explaining the presence of suspected PKK militants in western Turkey, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said they were increasingly trying to access the area by sea.

He told a parliamentary commission that rather than slipping into Turkey through northern Iraq, Iran or Syria, they were coming via Syria's Mediterranean city of Latakia to Turkish coastal resorts.

"Having come into the open sea on a ship, they then board smaller boats to get to the shore," he said, quoted by Anadolu.

He did not give further details on why they were coming from Latakia, which is a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey has strongly opposed Assad throughout Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011.