New French President Francois Hollande has vowed to try to repair damaged ties with Ankara, at a first meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Turkish media reported on Tuesday.

"Let us re-establish relations between Turkey and France, fix what has been damaged," Turkish President Abdullah Gul quoted Hollande as telling him at a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Chicago.

Ankara on Sunday reprimanded an Iraqi rally against its consulate in Basra, where protesters burnt Turkish flags after Turkey refused to hand over their fugitive vice president, Anatolia reported.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned "the ugly behavior against the Turkish flag in a demo apparently manipulated by impertinent individuals," in a phone conversation with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari.

Lawyers for Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni who is accused of running a death squad, on Sunday withdrew from the case, on the grounds their appeals had been rejected.

The vice president, last known to be in Turkey, is the subject of an Interpol red notice calling for his arrest but says he fears for his life in Baghdad. He is being tried in absentia on charges he says are politically motivated.

A worker was killed Saturday in an attack by Kurdish rebels on the construction site of a military outpost in southeastern Turkey, Anatolia news agency reported.

One worker was killed and three were injured when members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targeted the military building site in Semdinli town in Hakkari province, the agency reported quoting local officials.

Two Iranians kidnapped in Syria in December and freed with the help of Turkish mediation arrived in Tehran on Thursday, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Majid Qanbar Beedroomi and Ahad Sohrabi Kordabadi were among seven Iranian engineers abducted near central Homs city, where they worked at an electricity plant for Iran's Power Plant Projects Management Company, according to Iranian officials.

Three Turkish soldiers have been killed in clashes with Kurdish rebels in the southeast of the country, the Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday.

The fighting with members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) erupted during an operation in a rural area near the town of Dortyol in Hatay province, the provincial governor's office said, Anatolia reported.

Turkey accused Israel on Thursday of violating the airspace of Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus in a controversial oil and gas exploration area.

The Israeli aircraft violated the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus's airspace five times in Monday's incident which saw Turkish fighter jets chase out the intruder, the army command said in a statement.

Victims' families and witnesses on Tuesday accused Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi of masterminding killings at the opening of his trial in absentia on charges he says are politically-motivated.

Hashemi, one of the country's top Sunni Arab officials, was accused in December of running a death squad and, along with his staff and bodyguards, faces around 150 charges.

Turkey's ambassador to Syria said on Saturday the people of that country were being "fed with fears" about their fate should Bashar Assad's regime fall.

Speaking at the Lennart Meri Conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn, ambassador Omer Onhon decried conditions for the majority of Syrians, who he said have been led to believe the only alternative to Assad's authoritarian regime is civil war and religious radicalization.

Two Turkish journalists who were detained for two months in Syria are on their way home following mediation by Iran, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced Saturday.

"I have just spoken with Iranian Foreign Minister (Ali Akbar) Salehi. Our two journalists, Adem Ozkose and Hamit Coskun, about whom we had no news since they left for Syria, are on their way to Tehran now," Davutoglu said on Twitter.