Three people were wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a gendarmerie station in Turkey's southeastern province of Batman on Friday, the local governor's office said.

Two soldiers and one civilian were wounded in the attack, when a suspected Kurdish militant drove a stolen car through a police checkpoint and blew it up in front of the station in the Bekirhan district, the governor's office said.

The militant who carried out the attack was killed, it said, without elaborating. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, although the governor's office said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was believed to be responsible.

Two PKK militants earlier on Friday stole the car used in the attack and subsequently opened fire on a car belonging to the local mayor, who was not in the vehicle at the time, the governor's office said.

A teacher in a separate vehicle was killed in the gunfire and a bystander was wounded, it said, adding the gunmen escaped with the stolen car.

A ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK broke down in July 2015, plunging Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast into some of the worst violence in decades.

The autonomy-seeking PKK first took up arms against the state in 1984. It is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, Turkey and the European Union.