A four-year-old Syrian girl's body washed up on a beach in western Turkey on Friday, state media said, just weeks after images of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi shook the world. 

The yet-to-be identified girl was found lifeless on a beach in the Aegean town of Cesme in Izmir province after a boat carrying 15 Syrians to the Greek island of Chios sank, the official Anatolia news agency said. 

Turkish prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence of up to 34 years for an influential cleric accused of terrorism for allegedly conspiring against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state media said Thursday. 

Preacher Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan turned arch-foe and living in exile in the United States, is charged with "forming and running a terrorist organization," as well as  "forging official documents" and "libel", the official Anatolia news agency reported.

Thousands of people waving national flags took part in an anti-terrorism rally in Turkey's capital Ankara on Thursday, as the army presses a major offensive against Kurdish militants, who have killed dozens of security force members in weeks of attacks.

The rally was organized by a coalition of NGOs, trade unions and business groups, who warned that demonstrators displaying or voicing political emblems or slogans would be excluded.

Bulgaria began on Thursday deploying up to 1,000 troops to buttress its southeastern border with Turkey as hundreds of migrants remained stranded for a third day on the Turkish side, a senior official said.

"We have triggered a plan for the start of the step-by-step deployment of up to 1,000 troops along the whole Bulgarian-Turkish border (within the next week)," interior ministry chief of staff Georgy Kostov said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has praised Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey for taking in millions of refugees from the war in Syria, which is now in its fifth year.

“Lebanon is hosting Syrian refugees equal in number to 25 per cent of its population,” Ban told a news conference on Wednesday less than 10 days before world leaders gather at the U.N. Headquarters in New York for general debate of the 70th session of the General Assembly.

Turkish police on Wednesday arrested 11 people, including a senior business leader, as part of a crackdown on followers of an influential U.S.-based cleric accused of plotting against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, local media reported.

The arrests took place in the central city of Kayseri, where police raided a university that has been linked to Fethullah Gulen, Dogan press agency reported.

Two of 18 Turkish workers kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad this month have been freed in the southern city of Basra, Turkish and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday.

The men were among 18 employees of major Turkish construction firm Nurol Insaat kidnapped on September 2 in the Sadr City area of north Baghdad, where they were working on a football stadium project.

Around 1,000 refugees remained stranded Wednesday in the northwestern Turkish city of Edirne, near the Greek border, after being barred by Turkish authorities from continuing their journey to Europe.

"They cannot stay here. Maybe we will allow them to stay two or three days but then they have to leave," local governor Dursun Ali Sahin told Turkey's NTV channel, a day after police surrounded Edirne's bus station to contain the mostly Syrian crowd.

Five Turkish police officers were killed in two bomb attacks by Kurdish militants in the country's southeast overnight, Turkish security sources said Wednesday.

Three officers were killed and a fourth was seriously injured in an attack on a police vehicle travelling in the town of Nusaybin, near the Syrian border, a senior security official told Agence France Presse.

Several dozen migrants entered Croatia from Serbia early Wednesday, the first to enter the EU country after Hungary sealed its borders to thousand of people entering every day, an AFP correspondent saw.

The group of mostly Syrian or Afghan men, women and children crossed the border -- which was marked by nothing more than a stone -- early Wednesday morning and were picked up by police as they walked across a field.