Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled sweeping reforms in a bid to repair his image, bruised by mass protests and a stalled peace process with Kurdish rebels, analysts said Tuesday.

But Erdogan failed to appease his critics who said the long-awaited reform package did not go far enough and was merely a bid to shore up support ahead of elections next year.

Turkey's parliament will discuss a government motion authorizing military strikes against Syria on Thursday, the deputy prime minister said.

Bulent Arinc declined to comment on its scope while speaking to reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting on Monday.

Turkey on Monday announced it would lift a ban on women wearing headscarves in most public offices, following other measures critics say are aimed at Islamizing the staunchly secular country.

In a major speech to introduce political reforms, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that, with a few exceptions, civil servants would be allowed to wear headscarves after a long-standing ban is overturned.

Turkey on Monday moved to scrap restrictions on the use of the minority Kurdish language among democratic reforms designed to revive the stalled peace process with the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

But the proposed reforms fell short of satisfying a key Kurdish politician.

An accidental explosion Saturday in a factory producing rockets and missiles near to the Turkish capital Ankara injured four workers, two of whom are in a serious condition, national television said.

A powerful explosion went off in a building owned by weapons manufacturer Roketsan in Elmadag, in a distant suburb of Ankara, said CNN-Turk, quoting local authorities.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced Friday that long-sought peace talks aimed at bringing a political transition to Syria are tentatively planned for November.

"We are aiming for a conference in mid-November," Ban told reporters after the U.N. Security Council adopted a historic resolution to rein in Syria's chemical weapons.

Turkey's foreign minister says there has been "some progress" in improving Turkish-Israeli relations but Israel has not yet fulfilled all conditions for normalizing ties.

Relations between the former allies soured dramatically after Israeli commandos stormed a pro-Palestinian ship trying to breach a blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010. The raid killed eight Turks and one Turkish-American.

The captors of the two Turkish pilots moved them from Beirut's southern suburbs to an unknown location ahead of a security deployment in the area.

According to An Nahar newspaper published on Thursday, the two pilots are no longer in Dahieh and freeing them became more “complicated.”

Eighteen inmates detained for suspected links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Wednesday tunneled their way out of a prison in eastern Turkey, the justice minister said.

Four of the fugitives had already been convicted and the remainder were being held, charged with "membership of a terrorist organization," Sadullah Ergin said.

A Turkish court will try four police officers for the murder of a protester during anti-government clashes in June who was beaten so savagely he had a brain hemorrhage, local media said Tuesday.

The court in Eskisehir, western Turkey, said the officers would be put on trial after considering accusations of premeditated murder brought by the public prosecutor, the Dogan news agency reported.