Ankara - Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) looks set to sweep local elections on Sunday which are seen as a barometer of the strength of national political parties.

While polls vary, the AKP is once again set to win a plurality of votes in the balloting for mayors and municipal assembly members across Turkey's 81 provinces.

A poll released this week by the A&G research company put the national vote of the AKP at 39.1 per cent, well ahead of the main opposition Republican People's Party
(CHP) with 26.8 per cent.

Brussels  - Turkey must make sure it protects the freedom of the press, the head of the European Union's executive told Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Thursday.

"Full respect of press freedom is an important value for us. It is important that there be full respect of this basic, fundamental right," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said as he welcomed Gul on the first-ever visit to the EU's headquarters by a Turkish head of state.

Ankara - Search and rescue teams Thursday were scouring snow-covered mountains in central Turkey for of a helicopter crash with hopes of finding any of the six on board alive falling fast.

The private helicopter carrying Muhsin Yazicioglu, leader of Islamist far right Grand Unity Party (BBP), crashed in the province of Kahramanmaras on Wednesday afternoon.

Ankara - A senior Turkish foreign policymaker on Tuesday said Turkey does not look kindly on the prospect of Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen becoming NATO secretary-general, the Anadolu news agency reported.

"We cannot accept a man who does not respect our religious faith and our holy values, who has shown disrespect in the past, to become the head of NATO," said Suat Kiniklioglu, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party's Foreign Affairs Committee.

Baghdad  - Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in the first visit by a Turkish head of state to Iraq in 33 years, on Monday urged the Iraqi government to do more to uproot Kurdish separatists hiding in the mountains along Iraq's border with Turkey.

In a joint news conference in Baghdad on Monday, Gul and Iraqi Prime Minister Jalal Talabani, himself an ethnic Kurd, promised to present a common regional front in putting an end to cross-border attacks from militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq.

Ankara  - A serving colonel in Turkey's military police was on Monday taken into custody on suspicion of involvement in the extrajudicial executions of sympathizers of the rebel Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in south-east Turkey in the 1990s, the NTV private television station reported.

Colonel Cemal Temizoz, head of the military police, or gendarmes, responsible for security in rural areas in the central Anatolia province of Kayseri was taken to the city of Diyarbakir for questioning over the deaths of scores of people.