  In this paper we show how one can extend Turaev-Viro invariants, defined for
an arbitrary spherical fusion category $C$, to 3-manifolds with corners. We
demonstrate that this gives an extended TQFT which conjecturally coincides with
the Reshetikhin-Turaev TQFT corresponding to the Drinfeld center $Z(C)$. In the
present paper we give a partial proof of this statement.
