Turkey has suffered its second apparent terror attack of 2017 but this time Kurdish separatists are suspected of responsibility.
Gunfire broke out and a car bomb was detonated when police stopped a vehicle at the entrance to a courthouse in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir.
A policeman and an employee of the court were killed.
Two of the attackers were shot dead, while a third reportedly escaped.
The governor of Izmir blames the Kurdish militant group, the PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish army in the country's south-east.
"The findings that we have [so far] indicate that it was [the] PKK. If you look at the identities, it indicates PKK."
Police may have prevented a worse attack by stopping the vehicle at the court entrance.
The governor says there were more weapons in the car including rifles, rocket launchers and grenades.
The bombing comes less than a week after a gunman killed 39 people at a nightclub in Istanbul just after midnight on New Year's Eve.
That attack was claimed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
Despite more than 30 reported arrests in connection with the Istanbul attack, the gunman himself remains at large.
Turkish deputy prime minister Veysi Kaynak, speaking in a TV interview, says authorities suspect the shooter is an ethnic Uighur.
"These presumptions are evaluated. Probably, he is an Uighur but I don't want to comment on his nationality for the moment."
The Uigher are a largely Muslim ethnic minority based in Western China, with communities across central Asia and Turkey.
Earlier reports in Turkish media, quoting a security source, said the gunman was probably from Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan.
Both central Asian countries have significant Uighur populations.
Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey analyst from the Washington DC-based Turkey project, told Al Jazeera Turks generally empathise with the Muslim Uighers, who have a long history of tension with the Chinese state.
"There's a great deal of sympathy on the part of most Turks for the plight of the Muslim Turkic people of Xinjiang but at the same time the government has been very careful not to actually damage its relationship with the Chinese by backing them overtly. Normally the ones who live in Turkey don't get into trouble with the police, but apparently a number of them have been picked up, allegedly because of their involvement with the New Year's Eve / New Year's Day attack."
State media reported police had raided a town on the outskirts of Istanbul and detained more suspects in connection with the nightclub attack.
Uighur people were reportedly among those detained.
The Chinese government has alleged some Uighers have travelled to Syria to fight with jihadist groups, against the Assad government.
The Turkish army is also fighting in Syria, against both IS and Kurdish militants.
IS said the Istanbul nightclub attack was revenge for that campaign.
According to Bulent Aliriza, Turkey's violent start to 2017 could be a result of the country involving itself in the conflict.
"If ISIS is indeed carrying out attacks inside Turkey then this is a byproduct - a very much unwanted, undesirable byproduct - of Turkish involvement in the Syrian civil war."
