Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was nearing its "inevitable" end despite violence threatening the entire region.

"Assad's regime is approaching its inevitable end," Erdogan said in comments translated into Russian at a conference in the Ukrainian Black Sea resort of Yalta.

Turkey on Tuesday said it won't extradite Iraq's fugitive vice president Tareq al-Hashemi, who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court.

"We will host Hashemi in our country as long as he wants to remain in Turkey. We will not hand him over," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel praised on Saturday the efforts exerted by the Lebanese army to safely release the Turkish citizen, who was abducted by al-Meqdad clan in August.

“We hail the efforts exerted by the army and the security forces to free the Turkish citizen,” Gemayel said after holding talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel warned on Friday of forces in the Arab world that may seek to impose new dictatorships in the region.

He noted the existence of “dormant dictator cells” in the Arab world that are being protected by totalitarian regimes.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that Syria had become a "terrorist state" carrying out massacres against its own people.

"The regime in Syria has become a terrorist state," Erdogan told his ruling AKP meeting in Ankara. "Syria is not an ordinary country to us. We do not have the luxury to remain indifferent to what's happening there."

At least nine people, including four children, have died from a car bomb in a southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantap, Turkey's deputy prime minister said Tuesday, raising the earlier toll.

"The toll from this terrorist attack is now nine dead, including four children," said Besir Atalay.

Turkey has sent a convoy of tanks, weapons and ground-to-air missile batteries to the border with Syria, adding to its already fortified defenses around the frontier, Anatolia reported Monday.

A convoy of armored combat vehicles, troops, ammunition and missile systems left southeastern city of Gaziantep to be deployed in Kilis city along the border with Syria, Anatolia said.

Turkey said Sunday it would do everything it could to prevent "terrorist" formations near its border with Syria that would threaten its national security.

"We will not allow the formation of a terrorist structuring near our border," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish television channel Kanal 7.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Syria of giving Kurdish rebels a free hand in its north and warned that Ankara would not hesitate to strike.

"In the north, it (President Bashar Assad's regime) has allotted five provinces to the Kurds, to the terrorist organization," Erdogan said on Turkish television Wednesday, referring to the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday branded the massacre of 150 people in a central Syrian village as "attempted genocide" and said the regime was doomed.

"There is nothing more to be said about Syria," he said, speaking of the bloodshed in the village of Treimsa in Hama province, which activists said was bombarded by government forces.