Gov. Ibrahim Tasyapan of Van province said the attack, which targeted the police station in the town of Ipekyolu late Wednesday, also wounded dozens of other people.
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In the southeastern province of Bitlis meanwhile, five soldiers were killed after rebels detonated a roadside improvised explosive device as an armored military vehicle was passing by, officials said.
Turkey has accused Europe and the United States of taking a soft stance against the Gulen movement in the wake of the coup, in which the plotters bombed the Turkish parliament, killed more than 200 people and nearly assassinated Erdogan.
Three people were killed and 40 wounded after a auto bomb exploded on Wednesday near a police station in the western Turkish province of Van, according to state broadcaster TRT citing local government sources.
But this hasn’t contained the pro-Kurdish political party that the Turkish authorities say supports reports the BBC’s Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen, the PKK.
Turkey on Thursday ordered the seizure of the assets of 187 businessmen suspected of links to US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding an attempted coup, state media reported.
Clashes between the PKK and Turkish forces have been ongoing since a peace process crumbled in 2015, bringing an end to a two-year ceasefire.
At least three police officers were killed and 217 wounded, 85 of them police officers in the attack.
But Van, a city with a mixed Kurdish and Turkish population and a popular tourist destination, has generally been spared the worst of attacks like those seen in the nearby city of Diyarbakir, AFP says.
Yildirim said in his comments in Elazig that FETO – the government’s name for Gulen’s network – had “handed over its mission” to the PKK.
Turkey’s prime minister says his government wants the United States to speed up procedures for the extradition of USA -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of orchestrating last month’s violent coup attempt.
Erdogan boasted that Turkish forces have killed at least 182 Kurdish rebels since the failed July 15 military coup.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told foreign media representatives in Istanbul on Saturday that Turkey wants the United States to speed up procedures for extraditing Gulen.
Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict since the PKK took up arms for autonomy in southeast Turkey in 1984.
Asked whether the U.S. might cave into pressure, the cleric said there was a possibility.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings, but Yildirim said there was no doubt they were carried out by PKK militants, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Amnesty International sharply condemned Thursday’s bombings.
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“The terrorist organization won’t find the right to live anywhere”.
