The Turkish military has deployed tanks to the Syrian border where thousands of refugees - many of them ethnic Kurds - have gathered, fleeing from murderous Islamic State militants.
The porous border is believed to be the main route for Western would-be jihadists to join up with IS and other extremist groups in the Middle East as recruits fly into airports popular with tourists in southern Turkey, before easily slipping over the border into war-torn Syria.
But armed forces have rushed to control the barbed wire territory line which is now a key route of escape for Syrian Kurds.
Meanwhile, Kurdish forces in northern Syria pushed back an advance by Islamic State fighters towards a strategic town on the Turkish border on Thursday and appealed for U.S.-led air strikes to target the insurgents' tanks and heavy armaments.