The current one-year mandate expires on October 17.

Earlier this week, the general staff sent to the government a proposal for an extention, General Ferit Guler told reporters, according to Anatolia.

Parliament had already once extended the mandate, first approved in 2007.

A new vote will be held in parliament if the government submits a request.

The mandate authorises cross-border operations against hideouts of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, which the rebels use as a launching pad for strikes on Turkish targets across the border.

Using intelligence supplied by the United States, the Turkish army has staged a series of air raids against rebel targets in the region since December 2007, and in February the following year carried out a week-long ground incursion.

Some media have suggested the government may not seek another renewal of the mandate as it is working on a plan of democratic reforms to win over the Kurdish minority and peacefully end the 25-year conflict with the PKK.

Since last year, Turkey has also sought better ties with the Iraqi Kurds, whom it has accused of tolerating and even aiding the PKK.

But both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the army have dismissed calls from Kurdish activists to stop military operations against the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community.

The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.