Turkey faced harsh criticism Tuesday at a United Nations review of its rights record, with diplomats condemning intimidation of journalists and brutal police crackdowns on demonstrators.  

"We are concerned about growing restrictions on freedom of expression, including censorship of new media and the Internet, and provisions of Turkish law that unduly limit peaceful assembly," U.S. representative Keith Harper told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Kurdish fighters battled the Islamic State group in villages around Kobane on Tuesday, a day after expelling the jihadists from the strategic Syrian town on the Turkish border.

The news prompted celebrations among residents who fled across the frontier into Turkey, with thousands gathering at the border and hoping to return, more than four months after the fighting began.

Turkey will host a ceremony to commemorate Holocaust victims in its capital for the first time in a sign of solidarity with the Jewish community, an official said. 

"The ceremony will take place in Ankara for the first time, with the presence of parliament speaker," the official told Agence France Presse.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country opposes the idea of a Kurdish-controlled autonomous government in northern Syria, local media reported on Tuesday.

"We do not want a new Iraq. What's this? Northern Iraq," Erdogan told the Hurriyet newspaper aboard a plane en route from an African tour at the weekend. He was referring to the Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey on Sunday opened its biggest-ever refugee camp to host thousands of Syrian Kurds who fled an onslaught on the town of Kobane by Islamist militants, Turkey's emergency management agency said.

The camp, located in the Turkish border town of Suruc, will initially house a relatively small number of refugees, but will eventually be able to accommodate up to 35,000 people, an official told AFP on Monday. 

A Turkish court has ordered Facebook to block pages deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, threatening to shut down the social media network indefinitely if it ignores the directive, state media said Monday. 

The ruling came after Turkish prosecutors investigated the social media pages following a deadly attack on the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Sunday vowed that peace with Kurds would be achieved, seeking support from the country's largest minority group in a key visit to the southeast.

"The peace process will definitely reach success in any case and eternal brotherhood... will prevail," Davutoglu told a cheering crowd in the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in war-torn Somalia on Sunday amid tight security, a rare visit by a foreign leader to the war-torn nation.

Hundreds of soldiers and police officers had shut down much of the capital's streets, where on Thursday five people were killed in a suicide attack on a hotel housing the Turkish delegation in Mogadishu.

Tens of thousands of Kurds staged a protest Saturday in Turkey's southeast against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's cartoon portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed.

Some 70,000 protesters gathered in the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir shouting slogans such as "Allahu Akbar (God is the greatest)," "Devils of Charlie, do not defame my prophet!" and "Damn those who say 'Je suis Charlie'."

A Syrian refugee child has been beaten by a restaurant manager in the Turkish city Istanbul for eating a customer's leftovers, local media reported on Saturday.

A photo circulating on social media shows the 11-year-old boy sitting bloodied on stairs after having been beaten Wednesday by the manager of fast food chain Burger King's outlet in the Sirinevler district.