Turkish police launched a massive nationwide crackdown Tuesday against a radical Marxist group which claimed a suicide bomb attack against the U.S. embassy this month, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

Police issued arrest warrants for 167 people in 28 cities as part of the operation against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C), which is classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Anatolia said.

Turkey is defying Washington and Baghdad in developing a broad energy partnership with Iraqi Kurds as it pushes to secure affordable oil and gas supplies to fuel its rapid economic growth.

Analysts say the move could also establish the country as a regional energy hub, but risks aggravating tensions in the powderkeg region and damaging ties with the United States, its major ally.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the people of the Kurdish-majority southeast on Sunday to support new peace negotiations with outlawed rebels.

"We have initiated a process... to give a chance to a political solution. As long as you stand behind us, we will tackle this problem determinedly," Erdogan told party supporters in the town of Midyat, where the population is a mix of Kurds, Turks and Arabs.

The first of two power-generating vessels arrived in Lebanon on Saturday a week after it set sail to Lebanon.

The “Fatmagul Sultan” arrived in Lebanon's regional waters, but it failed to dock in Beirut Port due to “logistic problems,” reported the National News Agency.

A court in Turkey on Friday sentenced a French-Turkish student to more than five years in prison for "terrorist propaganda" but allowed her to return to France pending an appeal, her lawyer said.

The lawyer, Inayet Aksu, said the court in the northwestern city of Bursa had sentenced Sevil Sevimli, 21, to five years and two months in prison but freed her until her planned appeal and did not require that she stay in Turkey.

President Bashar Assad's regime has sent a letter to the United Nations blasting Turkey's "destructive" role in the conflict that has ravaged Syria for the past 23 months, state media reported Friday.

The Syrian foreign ministry's letter accuses Turkey of harboring "terrorists from al-Qaida's network", the SANA news agency said.

Turkish artillery struck back after a shell fired from neighboring Syria ploughed into Turkish territory without causing any casualties, the state-run news agency reported.

The shell fell near the town of Yayladag in Hatay province near the border with Syria and Turkish forces retaliated immediately, Anatolia said.

A record number of journalists were imprisoned worldwide in 2012 in a "deteriorating environment for press freedom," a leading media advocacy group said Thursday.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in its annual "Attacks on the Press" report that 232 journalists were jailed last year in a "trend driven primarily by terrorism and other anti-state charges levied against critical reporters and editors." It said the number was the highest since it made its first survey in 1990.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday called for the extradition of more than 20 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) arrested in multiple police raids in France and Spain.

"As long as these terrorists aren't handed over to us, the steps taken make no sense to us, because what we want is results," the premier said during a press conference in Ankara.

Six retired generals testified on Thursday in an Ankara court as part of an ongoing probe into the 1997 coup that ousted an Islamic-leaning government, local television reported.

They were summoned to testify a day after four ex-generals including a navy chief were detained pending trial for their alleged role in the coup, the latest development in a standoff between the military and Turkey's current Islamist-rooted government.