Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party on Sunday pressed Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu over whether a probe had been launched into claims that an attack by jihadists on a border post had been launched from Turkish soil.

The Turkish army on Saturday confirmed Islamic State (IS) jihadists had staged an attack at the Mursitpinar border post close to the Syrian town of Kobane but strenuously denied that the car involved in the strike had come from its territory.

The jailed leader of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said Sunday he was hopeful the peace process with the authorities would be concluded successfully within five months with enough determination.

In a statement made public after pro-Kurdish lawmakers visited him in his island prison off Istanbul, Ocalan said that a framework for the peace talks to end the three-decade rebellion was about to be finalized.

Pope Francis and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on Sunday made a joint pledge to support Christians in the Middle East, saying they could not let Christianity be driven out of the region.

"We cannot resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians, who have professed the name of Jesus there for two thousand years," the two Church leaders said in a joint declaration.

Jihadists from the Islamic State group battling for control of the Syrian border town Kobane have suffered some of their heaviest losses yet in 24 hours of clashes and U.S.-led strikes.

At least 50 jihadists were killed in the embattled town, in suicide bomb attacks, clashes with Kobane's Kurdish defenders and the air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

Turkish police on Saturday forcefully broke up a student protest close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's new presidential palace, with one policeman punching a student, reports said.

Video footage showed police, wearing body armor, using pepper spray to break up the protest over the Turkish tuition system as the students tried to march towards the palace in Ankara.

Pope Francis on Friday paused for a moment of contemplation in an Ottoman mosque alongside a top Islamic cleric, as he visited Istanbul on a richly-symbolic trip to the former capital of the Christian Byzantine world.

On the second day of his first trip to overwhelmingly Muslim but officially secular Turkey, Francis toured key religious and historical sites in the city once known as Constantinople that was conquered by the Ottoman army in 1453.

Islamic State group jihadists launched a double attack Saturday on a Kurdish-controlled post on the Syrian-Turkish border for the first time, prompting fierce clashes in the adjacent town of Kobane.

Kurdish officials and a Britain-based monitor said the two IS suicide attacks targeting the border post were launched from Turkish soil, claims that Turkish officials dismissed as "lies."

The vast gates swung open and the host personally welcomed his distinguished visitor with all the pride of someone who has just acquired a new home.

Pope Francis on Friday become the first foreign dignitary to be received at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's new presidential palace, one of the most controversial building projects in modern Turkey.

Turkish security forces and pro-Kurdish protesters clashed on Friday as tensions erupted over the visit of a nationalist leader to a flashpoint eastern region, an AFP photographer reported.

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli, a figure of hate for many Kurds, visited the eastern province of Tunceli, a stronghold of Kurds who adhere to the Alevi offshoot of Shia Islam.

Pope Francis on Friday called for dialogue between faiths to end the Islamist extremism plaguing the Middle East as he visited Turkey on his first trip to the overwhelmingly Muslim but officially secular state.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who welcomed Pope Francis as the first foreign dignitary to his controversial new presidential palace outside Ankara, for his part issued a strong warning about rising Islamophobia in the world.