The families of the kidnapped pilgrims held in Syria staged a sit-in on Friday at Beirut's Martyrs' Square to demand the release of their loved ones.

They announced that they have launched a campaign to boycott Turkish products in Lebanon, urging citizens throughout the country to support them.

Turkish police have uncovered and foiled an alleged plot by al-Qaida to bomb the U.S. embassy in Ankara, as well as a synagogue and other targets in Istanbul, Turkish media reported on Friday.

As a result of a February raid in Istanbul and the northeastern city of Corlu, police had arrested 12 people, including eight Turks, two Azeris and two Chechens, and seized 22 kilograms of explosives, CNNTurk reported.

Syria's economy and trade ministry plans to set up an office tasked with overseeing a boycott of Turkish industry, which has contributed to "sabotaging the national economy" an official said Thursday.

"Those factories that have contributed to sabotaging Syria's national economy and looting factories in Aleppo and its province... do not deserve to be dealt with as legal entities," Deputy Minister of Economy Abdel Salam Ali told Agence France Presse.

Clashes between sympathizers of the Kurdish rebel movement and Islamists that broke out at a university in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast this week left four people injured on Wednesday, security officials said.

The violence erupted at Dicle University in Diyarbakir city on Monday when the rebel sympathizers confronted others supporting Turkey's largely defunct Hezbollah movement over Islamic brochures the latter were distributing.

Ireland is ready to share its experience with Turkey on ending decades of violence, a negotiator for the Good Friday Northern Ireland accords said Wednesday.

Dominic Hannigan, a former head of the Good Friday Agreement committee, told his Turkish and Kurdish counterparts that they must "take risks" for peace if they hope to end three decades of armed struggle.

President Michel Suleiman called on Turkey to exert more pressure to release the abducted Lebanese in the Syrian town of Aazaa.

Suleiman stressed during his meeting on Wednesday with the Turkish Transportation Minister Binali Yildirim at the Presidential Palace in Baabda that such pressure helps enhance relations between Lebanon and Turkey.

Turkey has delayed the start of talks this week with Israel over compensation that the Jewish state will pay to victims of a deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, the government said.

"The compensation meeting with Israel has been delayed to April 21 or 22," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting late Monday.

Pro-Palestinian activists said on Monday they would not withdraw a lawsuit against Israeli commanders for a fatal 2010 raid on their Gaza-bound flotilla, ahead of official compensation talks between Turkey and the Jewish state this week.

"We will not discuss compensation or give up on the trials until the blockade over Gaza is removed," said Musa Cogas, one of the activists who was on board the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in the flotilla aimed at breaking Israel's Gaza blockade.

Scuffles broke out between police and demonstrators outside a prison complex in Turkey Monday where nearly 10,000 people protested the mass trial of 275 people accused of scheming to topple the elected Turkish government.

An Agence France Presse photographer saw protesters trying to breach the security barricade outside the compound in Silivri, a suburb on the outskirts of Istanbul.

The United States' top diplomat warned Iran on Sunday that time is running out on nuclear negotiations between the Islamic republic and world powers.

"This is not an endless process. ... You can't just talk for the sake of talking," Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in Istanbul.