Thousands of people on Sunday turned out for a mass rally in support of the Kurdish candidate in Turkey's presidential elections, in a rare large-scale show of Kurdish nationalism in the center of Istanbul.

Some 10,000 people rallied by the shores of the Bosphorus in Kadikoy, the main hub of the Asian side of Istanbul, for the address by Kurdish candidate Selahattin Demirtas.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is confident of easily winning the presidential election but faces a much harder task after the vote in implementing his self-declared mission of changing Turkey's political system.

Compared to previous Turkish heads of state who have fulfilled largely ceremonial roles, Erdogan wants to be a president like no other since modern Turkey's founder, Ataturk.

Turkey will hold its first presidential election next Sunday with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeking to become a powerful head of state, amid fears from critics of a shift to autocratic one-man rule.

Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) have led the country of 76 million people for over a decade but taking the presidency could see him serve two more five-year terms.

Islamist militants who kidnapped 49 Turks at a Turkish consulate in northern Iraq in June will likely free them in the next day or two, Turkey's Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said Saturday.

A bitter row erupted Friday between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his main rival in the presidential election after the premier accused his opponent of not recognizing the Turkish national anthem.

Erdogan mercilessly mocked Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu for not knowing the Istiklal Marsi (Independence March) anthem, a huge insult in a country which sets great store by patriotism.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday launched one of his strongest attacks yet on Israel over its offensive in the Gaza Strip, accusing the Jewish state of showing "Hitler-like fascism" against the Palestinians.

Speaking at a mass rally in eastern Turkey to promote his candidacy in presidential elections, Erdogan said he was happy to give back an award that was bestowed upon him by an American Jewish Group in 2004.

Twenty-six people died as a result of a horrific tanker truck explosion in southeast Turkey last week, with the toll rising drastically after more victims passed away at hospitals across the country, media reported Thursday.

A tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) overturned and exploded on a highway near Diyarbakir on July 22, killing one person on the spot.

An award-winning Turkish-German director, Fatih Akin, says he dropped plans to make a film about an Armenian journalist murdered in 2007 because no Turkish actor wanted to play the lead role in a movie about the hugely sensitive case.

In an interview with Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, Akin said he instead turned to making another controversial film, "The Cut", which deals with the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Those slaying are seen in Armenia and several other countries -- but not by Turkey -- as a genocide.

Members of Germany's large Turkish community started casting ballots Thursday for the August presidential election, the first time they can vote abroad for a poll in their country of origin.

Germany is home to some three million people of Turkish descent, the world's largest Turkish expatriate community, and 1.4 million of these are eligible voters with Turkish nationality.

A senior Turkish minister who caused an outcry by suggesting women should not laugh loudly in public waded into a new controversy on Wednesday by attacking women who he said could not resist pole dancing.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, a co-founder of the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), has strongly criticized in recent days what he sees as a decline of moral standards in Turkey.