Turkey on Tuesday said it has banned entry to more than five thousand foreign jihadists suspected of seeking to head to Syria to join radical Islamist groups fighting the Syrian regime.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his Islamic-rooted government was taking "all the measures" to stem the flow of jihadists from abroad, who were "using Turkey as a transit point" to enter war-torn Syria.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is widely expected to run for president in August, said Sunday he has no concerns over the future of his Islamic-rooted governing party.

"The AK Party is not one man's party... (it) has its own rules and mechanisms," Erdogan told a party meeting in Istanbul. 

Turkey said Saturday it will provide fuel to Iraq's Kurdistan region to make up for a shortage caused by a militant offensive that has shut down the country's biggest oil refinery.

Militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have seized a vast swathe of territory in northern Iraq since overrunning the city of Mosul on June 10.

Hundreds protested against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the French city of Lyon on Saturday as he visited Europe ahead of an expected bid for the presidency.

Organizers said 1,000 people took part in the protest organized by pro-democracy and minority groups near a local government office, where Erdogan met regional officials. Police said there were about 500 protesters.

The father of a British man who left to fight in Syria said on Saturday he "wants to cry" after his son appeared in an online video aimed at recruiting jihadists.

Ahmed Muthana identified the man in the 13-minute video, entitled "There is No Life Without Jihad", as his 20-year-old son, Nasser Muthana, from Cardiff. 

The number of people driven from their homes by conflict and crisis has topped 50 million for the first time since World War II, with Syria hardest hit, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

The UNHCR said there were 51.2 million forcibly displaced people at the end of 2013, a full six million higher than the previous year.

As many as 10,000 people demonstrated in Vienna on Thursday in protest at a visit by Turkey's strongman Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, organizers and police said.

Erdogan has been accused of autocratic tendencies in his home country and a similar trip to Germany last month ruffled feathers after he spoke out against assimilation of Turkish immigrants.

Magistrates in Istanbul on Thursday ordered the release of 230 military officers sentenced for plotting to overthrow the government, a day after Turkey's top court said the original trial was flawed.

The Istanbul court ruled that the sentences of between 13 and 20 years should be suspended until the officers can face a retrial, local media reported.

Greece's coastguard on Thursday rescued 73 migrants in three separate incidents near the Aegean islands of Lesbos and Samos, it said.

The first two groups, numbering 60 migrants of unknown nationality, were picked up in the waters northeast and southeast of Lesbos, respectively.

Russia has arrested a 43-year-old Turkish national put on an international terrorist wanted list last year, the interior ministry said.

The unidentified man was apprehended in recent days and ordered to remain in custody by a court Tuesday, the ministry's branch in southern Volgograd region said.