Bulgaria has turned back more than 100 clandestine immigrants at its border with Turkey at the weekend, an interior ministry official said Sunday, amid rising nationalist tensions in the European Union's poorest member.

The group of migrants was stopped in the Strandzha mountains in the southeast of the country, the ministry's secretary general Svetlozar Lazarov told public radio.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu landed in Baghdad on Sunday for a slew of meetings with top Iraqi officials as the two neighbors seek a "fresh start" to chilled ties.

Relations between Ankara and Baghdad, which had been on the upswing as recently as 2011, fell off as the two countries clashed over the war in Syria, Turkey's ties with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, and sharp words between their prime ministers.

Materiel resembling mortar shells seized in a Turkish village near the border with Syria turned out not to contain explosives as initially feared, police said late Friday.

"After analysis it turns out that contrary to press reports the materiel seized looks like mortar shells but is not explosive," a police statement said.

Syria's splintered opposition coalition insisted Saturday it would not go to peace talks in Geneva unless pressure was brought to bear on Damascus to abide by the outcome.

"We have always said that we are fully committed to Geneva. But we are worried that if we go there the Assad regime is not serious about the implementation of Geneva," said coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh.

Turkey's deputy prime minister on Friday announced plans to withdraw from active politics after disagreement with leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan over mixed-sex student dorms.

"I want to withdraw from active political life. If Mr Prime Minister allows me and respects my decision, I will not be a candidate for any (government) post," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told TRT-Turk television.

Turkish riot police fired tear gas and water cannon at thousands of demonstrators who were protesting Thursday over the building of a controversial wall on the border with Syria, witnesses said.

Police took action to disperse a large crowd of people who threw Molotov cocktails and plastic bottles at officers in the border town of Nusaybin in the Kurdish-majority southeast, they said.

Turkish authorities on Thursday confiscated a large number of rocket warheads near the Syrian border, a local governor said.

Acting on a tip-off, police stopped a truck in Adana, around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Syrian border, and seized 1,200 rocket warheads, governor Huseyin Avni Cos told NTV television.

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday sentenced Turkey over a case of police torture dating back to 1999, imposing a fine of 20,000 euros ($27,000).

Mesut Deniz, a 38-year-old Turk currently serving a prison sentence, said he was given electric shocks, hanged by his arms, had his genitals twisted and subjected to other forms of torture after his arrest.

A Kurdish mayor on hunger strike in Turkey to protest the building of a barrier on the border with Syria accused Ankara on Tuesday of putting up a "wall of shame".

Ayse Gokkan of the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (BDP), who has been on hunger strike for seven days, says the wall will divide the Kurdish people and has called it a "black stain on history".

Turkey resumed talks to gain entry into the European Union after a 40-month freeze Tuesday, with both sides hailing a potential "turning point" in Ankara's stalled bid to join the EU club.

"This is only a beginning," said Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis after officially opening negotiations on chapter 22, one of 35 sets of rules and standards that EU candidates must satisfy before joining the 28-member bloc.