General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim is expected to travel to Turkey next week to discuss with Qatari officials the case of Lebanese servicemen taken hostage by jihadists last year.

Security sources told al-Akhbar daily published on Friday that Ibrahim, who is the official Lebanese negotiator in the case of the troops and policemen, will inform the Qataris that Lebanon has completed the file on the prisoner exchange which was mediated by Doha's envoy.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday asked Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to form the new government, over a month after legislative elections in which the ruling party lost its overall majority.

Erdogan mandated Justice and Development Party (AKP) chief Davutoglu to form the new government in talks at his presidential palace in Ankara, the presidency said in a short statement on its website.

Two Turkish newspaper commentators went on trial on Thursday for illustrating their columns with a controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya, writers at the secular Cumhuriyet daily, face up to 4 1/2 years in jail on charges of "inciting public hatred" and "insulting religious values" in connection with the cartoon. 

Greek and Turkish coastguards have recovered the bodies of five migrants after a boat sinking in the Aegean Sea and another 13 are still missing, officials said Thursday.

Greece was using a helicopter, three patrol boats and a navy vessel to look for other survivors after 19 people were rescued.

Turkish former air force general Tahsin Sahinkaya, the last surviving leader of the 1980 coup which led to military rule and left lasting scars on the country, died on Thursday. He was 90.

The putsch on September 12, 1980 was the bloodiest in Turkey's coup-ridden history, overthrowing a civilian government and putting in place a military junta that ruled Turkey for three years.

A senior U.S. delegation ended two days of talks Wednesday with Turkish officials on escalating the fight against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria, sources said.  

The delegation, including U.S. presidential envoy John Allen and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth, met in Ankara with Turkish military officials and foreign ministry undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, they said.

Turkey's disaster management agency is readying a giant new refugee camp to house 55,000 people in the south of the country in anticipation of a new wave of migrants fleeing the civil war in Syria, reports said Wednesday.

The head of Turkey's disaster management agency, Fuad Oktay, was quoted by local media as saying that as many as 100,000 more refugees could arrive in a 24-hour time span, given the increasingly fragile security situation in Syria.

Between 11 and 15 migrants trying to reach Europe by boat are missing off the Greek Aegean island of Agathonissi, near the Turkish coast, after their vessel sank, the Greek coastguard said Tuesday.

One body was recovered from the sea, while Greek vessels saved eight survivors and the Turks picked up 13, one coastguard official told AFP.

The U.S. special envoy for the coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group was in Ankara on Tuesday to meet Turkish officials, after speculation Turkey could launch a military intervention inside Syria, sources told AFP.

"General John Allen will hold talks in Ankara today," a Turkish official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that the talks were "naturally" expected to focus on the fight against IS.

The Turkish army has called a meeting of troop commanders stationed along its fortified border with Syria to discuss a possible intervention in Syria, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Sunday. 

Turkey has boosted its military defenses on the volatile border over the past week, stationing tanks and anti-aircraft missiles there as well as bolstering troop numbers, as fighting between Islamist-led groups and Syrian regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo has intensified.