Sixteen Indonesians, mostly women and children, have been arrested in Turkey attempting to cross into Syria to join the Islamic State (IS) group, a minister said, the latest case of Indonesians heading to battlegrounds in the Middle East.

The 11 children, four women and one man from the world's most populous Muslim-majority country were detained in the Turkish border town of Gaziantep. Officials did not say when they were arrested.

A Berlin court has fined three Lebanese men on allegations they seized a 15-year-old relative against his will in what he says was an attempt to force him into marriage because he's gay.

State Court spokesman Tobias Kaehne said Thursday the boy's father and two uncles were each fined 1,350 euros ($1,430), or 90 days in jail, if they don't pay.

Turkey's coastguard on Thursday closed the Dardanelles Straits to shipping after launching a chase for a cargo ship suspected of carrying hundreds of illegal migrants, reports said.

The ship did not heed calls from the coastguard, including warning shots, and continued on its course, the Dogan news agency reported.

Turkey on Thursday said it had detained an intelligence agent working for one of the states in the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State (IS) for helping three British teenage girls cross into Syria to join the jihadists.

The surprise revelation by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu appeared aimed at deflecting sustained criticism from Western countries that Turkey is failing to halt the flow of jihadists across its borders.

The emir of Qatar on Thursday met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for surprise talks in the capital Ankara, a Turkish presidential official said. 

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was holding closed-door talks at Erdogan's newly built presidential palace in Ankara, the official told Agence France Presse, without elaborating further.

Mohammed Bakkar spends his days with his father and son in a small classroom in Lebanon near the Syrian border, where they cook, eat, wash and sleep, waiting for the day they can reunite with the rest of their family.

Bakkar's mother, wife and four other children are hundreds of miles away in Jordan's Azraq refugee camp, squeezed into a white prefab trailer of corrugated metal. When they fled to Jordan after government attacks in their village in Syria in 2013, they thought it would be just a few weeks until they were reunited. It has been more than two years.

An envoy from Qatar was in Beirut on Thursday to mediate in the case of the Lebanese servicemen taken hostage by jihadists last year, al-Mustaqbal daily reported.

Government sources told the newspaper the mediator's arrival in the Lebanese capital was a sign that the negotiations on the captives have made a serious development.

Turkish police on Wednesday violently dispersed protests commemorating a teenager killed in 2013 anti-government demonstrations and whose death has become a rallying point for opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Some protesters threw fireworks and Molotov cocktails as they engaged in street battles with police, who used water cannon and tear gas, in the Istanbul district of Okmeydani, an Agence France-Presse photographer reported.

Turkey's powerful spy chief Hakan Fidan on Tuesday returned to his duties in a surprise U-turn just over a month after sensationally quitting the job in a move that raised the prospect of a split in the Turkish elite.

Fidan had on February 7 quit as chief of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) to stand in June legislative elections for the ruling party.

The relatives of the Lebanese hostages urged the authorities on Tuesday to bring their loved ones back home with some of them expressing conflicting viewpoints on the negotiations to release them.

“We urge Prime Minister Tammam Salam to resolve the case and bring our loved ones back home,” one of the family members said following talks with Health Minister Wael Abou Faour.