Fuat Mehmetoglu, 32, has been missing since Friday morning when his car was found torched and abandoned on a road outside Hazro, a town near Diyarbakir, the main city of the Kurdish-majority southeast.

His father Fethullah Mehmetoglu is Hazro's mayor and a member of the ruling Justice and Development (AKP), which is popular among Kurds in the region.

The incident comes amid simmering tensions in the region ahead of Turkey's June 12 parliamentary elections, in which the AKP is the main rival of nationalist Kurdish candidates seen as close to the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting Ankara since 1984.

The PKK has been blamed for reprisal abductions in the past.