Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied the World War I killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, just days after his government offered condolences over the massacres for the first time. 

"This is not possible because if such a genocide had been the case, would there have been Armenians living in this country?" Erdogan told U.S. broadcaster PBS on Monday.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he is prepared to normalize ties with Israel within days or weeks after counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for a deadly raid in 2010.

Erdogan, speaking on U.S. broadcaster PBS late Monday, said U.S. President Barack Obama was instrumental in arranging a phone call between the leaders of Israel and Turkey, which have been at odds since a 2010 Israeli commando raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla of aid ships left nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists dead.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday he will seek the extradition of an exiled cleric he accuses of orchestrating a major corruption scandal against his government from his base in the United States.

Erdogan told reporters that a legal procedure "will begin" for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a former ally he says is running a "parallel state" that reaches into the top echelons of the Turkish police and judiciary.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday rejected criticism from Germany's president who said he was "scared" by the Turkey's recent spate of rights abuses. 

"I think he still thinks of himself as pastor," Erdogan told parliament, a day after he met with German President Joachim Gauck who is on a four-day visit to Turkey.

An international rights group called Tuesday for the U.N. Security Council to block the flow of weapons to Syria's regime, which it said was launching indiscriminate attacks with "barrel bombs".

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had documented 85 aerial attacks by the regime against opposition areas in northern Aleppo province since February 22 alone.

Germany's president told Turkey on Monday that its future lies with Europe but the relationship is threatened by the government's recent attempts to muzzle the media and judiciary.

"We see this nation's future in cooperation with Europe, although we cannot tell how and when because we don't know," President Joachim Gauck told a news conference during a landmark four-day visit.

Syrians who fled their war-torn country via unofficial crossings will be barred from voting in next month's presidential elections, the country's electoral commission chief said on Monday.

"Syrians who left Syria illegally do not have the right to vote in host countries," Hisham Shaar was quoted as saying by pro-regime newspaper Al-Watan on Monday.

In rebel-held parts of southern Damascus, activists say the streets are filled with "ghosts" -- Syrians wandering and begging, desperate for food and medicine that is nowhere to be found.

In February, the U.N. Security Council urged the government and opposition to allow aid to be delivered freely, but civilians, activists and aid workers say little has changed.

Turkish security forces on Sunday detained an American journalist and two Syrians as they tried to cross a river flowing from Syria into southern Turkey by raft, the army said. 

The three were spotted on the Asi river near the border province of Hatay, the army said in a statement, without revealing their identities.

An armed Kurdish group has abducted two Turkish soldiers in the southeast of the country, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported Sunday.

The abduction took place late Saturday, after the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) issued a statement warning of a possible return to violence.