WARNING - GRAPHIC FOOTAGE: Car bomb explodes in the heart of Turkey's capital, killing at least 34 people and wounding around 125 others.

Next month hundreds of New Zealanders will face the pre-dawn chill on Gallipoli Peninsula to commemorate Anzac Day.

The European Union is facing increasing pressure to speak out against the erosion of media freedom in Turkey.

Twenty-eight people have been killed and dozens wounded in Ankara after a car laden with explosives detonated near the armed forces' headquarters.

The Turkish government, in league with Saudi Arabia, made a tentative decision to enter the war on the ground in Syria, writes Gwynne Dyer.

Ceasefire means little as rebels hold various factions at bay and children typically become the victims.

Up to 70,000 Syrians are heading for Turkey, threatening to send a new wave of refugees into Europe as Syria's civil war intensifies.

Ewan McDonald sails (not cruises) on a yacht (not a ship) across the Mediterranean from Rome to points east and south.

The Turkish leader has two goals: to ensure the destruction of Assad's regime, and to prevent the creation of a new Kurdish state in Syria, writes Gwynne Dyer.

Germany offered Turkey the prospect of faster progress on its hope of joining the European Union in exchange for badly needed help in stemming the flow of refugees to Europe.

Yunus Emre Alagoz, whose younger brother Abdurrahman killed 33 people in a bomb massacre in July, was named by Turkish police in local media.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully says there are no reports of New Zealanders being caught up in a terrorist bombing in Turkey's capital

Two bomb blasts ripped through crowds at a rally of peace activists in the Turkish capital last night.

Turkish efforts to stop traffickers from sending large "ghost ships" crammed with migrants towards Italy has sparked the surge in arrivals in Greece, the International Organisation for Migration says.

A battlefield centenary service has been held on a hill where nearly 850 New Zealanders were killed in two days of intense fighting during the Gallipoli campaign.

An epic bloody battle in which almost 900 Kiwi soldiers died capturing a Turkish hill they would only hold for a few hours will be remembered 100 years on this weekend.

The Middle East continues its slide into chaos with Turkish warplanes joining the fray in Syria, further embroiling Nato's eastern rampart in that country's civil war.

Turkey has waded into Syria's four-year civil war, using fighter jets to bomb Islamic State (Isis) fighters across the border for the first time.

A 10-month-old baby girl was rescued off the coast of Turkey today after her flotation device was swept a half mile out to sea.

Counter-terrorism teams launched raids in three Turkish cities yesterday, seizing firearms and arresting suspected Isis militants.

On the western fringe of Ankara, gouged into some 50ha of forest bequeathed to the Turkish republic by the nation's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an extravagant presidential compound rises up.

Turkish voters delivered a dramatic blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice Development Party as results yesterday showed it losing its majority in Parliament.

There's a lot to see and comprehend in Turkey. Mike Osborne draws up a shortlist of seductive attractions.

The Prince of Wales and Prince Harry have met relatives of veterans of the Gallipoli Campaign who 100 years ago were on the eve of history.

Reporter Kurt Bayer sets the scene for those on home soil as the first centenary commemoration winds down, a world away.

The first of the Anzac commemorative services is well underway, as Kiwis start to rise to commemorate our fallen heroes here on home soil.

A tour of Gallipoli's battlefields has left Prime Minister John Key sad, sobered and immensely proud.

If a New Zealand commander had told his troops at Gallipoli, ‘I am not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die’, it’s unlikely that he’d be remembered by towering statues or commemorative coins.

Nicola Lamb will never forget a special lunch with the locals at a small Turkish Village.