Twenty one drowned migrants wash up on Turkey beaches

The bodies of nine drowned migrants, including children, have washed up on a beach on Turkey's Aegean coast after their boat capsized.

The bodies of nine drowned migrants have washed up on a beach on Turkey's Aegean coast. (AAP)

Turkey's gendarmerie said it found the bodies of 21 migrants, three of them children, at two separate locations on the Aegean coast on Tuesday after their boat apparently capsized as they tried to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

Eleven of the bodies were discovered on the shoreline in the district of Ayvalik, while ten others were found in the district of Dikili, a gendarmerie official in the local headquarters told Reuters.

A coast guard official said three boats and a helicopter were searching for any survivors.

The Dogan news agency says the bodies were discovered early on Tuesday in the resort town of Ayvalik, from where migrants set off on boats to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

Turkish coasts guards were dispatched to search for possible survivors. Eight migrants were rescued.

Dogan video footage showed a body, still wearing a life jacket, being pulled from the sea onto the sandy beach.

There was no immediate information on the migrants' nationalities.

Some 850,000 migrants and refugees crossed into Greece last year, paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey in frail boats.