Refugees seeking to return to the Syrian town of Tal Abyad after fleeing fighting there last week were stuck on the Turkish side of the border Thursday amid conflicting accounts over who closed the frontier.

Turkish authorities said refugees were not able to cross because Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia had closed the gate on the other side of the border.

Conflicts and violence raging around the world sent the number of people forced to flee their homes soaring to a record 60 million last year, the United Nations said Thursday.

That is 8.3 million more refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) in the world than in 2013 -- the highest-ever increase in a single year, the U.N. refugee agency said in a report titled "World at War".

They acknowledge the risk of further violence, fear jihadists could seek to retake their home town and worry their possessions have been destroyed.

But the moment the fighting stopped, many refugees from the Syrian town of Tal Abyad could think of nothing other than going home.

Far from sharing Western euphoria over Kurds' capture of a key border town from Islamic State (IS) jihadists, Turkey is alarmed by the advance of Kurdish forces, fearing that they could create a powerful autonomous region on its doorstep.

Backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, fighters with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia this week seized the key Syrian border town of Tal Abyad from IS jihadists.

Syrian refugees in Turkey began returning to their homes in Tal Abyad Wednesday after Kurdish forces seized the border town in a major blow to the Islamic State group.

Some 400 men, women and children carrying their meager possessions crossed back into Syria through the Turkish border post of Akcakale, a day after Kurdish fighters backed by Syrian rebels took Tal Abyad.

Progressive Socialist Party spokesman Rami al-Rayyes has said that talks carried out by PSP officials in Turkey have led to an agreement to protect the minority Druze sect in Syria.

Al-Rayyes told al-Mustaqbal daily published on Wednesday that the delegation, which was led by Health Minister Wael Abou Faour, agreed with top Turkish officials and the representatives of the Syrian opposition on “certain measures” to protect the Druze.

Turkey's former president and prime minister Suleyman Demirel, a political giant for over half a century who survived two military coups and a ban on holding office, died Wednesday. He was 90.

His heyday was during one of the most chaotic periods of modern Turkish history when governments changed sometimes annually under the shadow of the powerful military, and the country was beset by daily street violence and an economic slump.

An Ankara court on Tuesday handed down a 21-month suspended jail sentence to an editor of a leading English-language Turkish daily newspaper after convicting him of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Ankara penal court said that Today's Zaman editor-in-chief Bulent Kenes was guilty of insulting Erdogan in a tweet implying his late mother would have been ashamed of him had she lived to see what he was doing to Turkey.

There is strong international and domestic momentum behind U.N.-brokered peace talks aimed at reuniting Cyprus after 41 years, an "encouraged" U.N. envoy said Tuesday.

"We are on a good track right now. and the international support is remarkably strong," Norwegian diplomat Espen Barth Eide told reporters after meeting Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.

Some 23,000 people have fled from Syria to Turkey between June 3 and 15, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

"New fighting in northern Syria has seen 23,135 refugees fleeing across the border into Turkey's Sanliurfa province," during that period, spokesman William Spindler said, citing figures given by Turkish authorities on Tuesday.