The European Union voiced its concern Wednesday over the political turmoil convulsing Turkey as the government conducted a new mass purge of senior police officers.

In its strongest comments yet on the widening corruption scandal engulfing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the EU called for Turkish authorities to ensure they acted impartially.

Turkish military prosecutors on Tuesday cleared five army officers accused of perpetrating a botched air strike on Kurds in 2012 that killed dozens of people including children.

But the ruling was immediately denounced by Kurdish groups and representatives of the victims' families as unacceptable.

Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan met his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe for free trade talks Tuesday, as pressure mounted at home over a corruption scandal in which hundreds of police officers were fired.

The two countries also confirmed their cooperation on nuclear technology, as Abe seeks deals to revive the world's third-largest economy.

The Turkish government has fired 350 police officers in Ankara, local media reported Tuesday, the latest twist in a vast corruption scandal that has ensnared key allies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The officers were sacked by a government decree published at midnight and included chiefs of the financial crimes, anti-smuggling, cyber crime and organized crime units, the private Dogan News Agency reported.

A U.N.-hosted peace conference on Syria must work to remove President Bashar Assad from power because of his culpability for tens of thousands of deaths, Turkey's Prime Minster said in Tokyo on Tuesday.

"In Geneva 2, we must make sure that... all the measures will not fail...so that we can (bring) in an era without Bashar Assad," he said, referring to peace talks planned later this month in Switzerland.

A Turkish photographer kidnapped while covering the civil war in neighboring Syria has returned home after being freed from weeks in captivity, his newspaper said on Monday.

Bunyamin Aygun, who works for the newspaper Milliyet, was taken hostage by radical Islamists in mid-December during a reporting mission in the war-torn country.

A Turkish photographer kidnapped while covering the civil war in neighboring Syria has been freed, Turkey's state news agency said Sunday.

Bunyamin Aygun, who works for the newspaper Milliyet, was taken hostage by radical Islamists late last year during a reporting mission in the war-torn country.

Turkey's embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday he would favor retrials for hundreds of military officers jailed for coup-plotting.

In the latest sign of the turmoil that has gripped Turkish politics since the government was hit a huge corruption scandal last month, Erdogan appeared ready to reach out to the generals he once hounded.

Three Kurdish lawmakers suspected of ties to PKK rebel separatists were to be released from prison on Saturday, a day after two other Kurd parliamentarians were freed, a judicial source said.

Kemal Aktas, Selma Irmak and Faysal Sariyildiz would be freed "during the day" from prisons in Mardin and Diyarbakir, two cities in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, the source said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist-leaning government is engulfed in a corruption scandal, on Saturday called the political crisis a "plot" against Turkey's "future and stability" by rival forces.

At a luncheon in Istanbul with generally pro-government intellectuals, writers and journalists, Erdogan reiterated his view that forces in Turkey and abroad are conspiring to oust him from power.