Brussels needs Turkey as a strategic ally against the Islamic State group and should carry on membership talks with Ankara despite concerns over human rights, the EU's executive branch said Wednesday.

A European Commission report accused Turkey, which began formal EU accession talks in 2005, of undermining the independence of judges and freedom of expression in the last year.

Turkey detained dozens of Kurds who crossed the border from the besieged Syrian town of Kobane on suspicion of having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), officials said Wednesday.

A local official in the Turkish border town of Suruc told AFP around 265 people were taken into custody for fingerprint identification after they crossed from the mainly Kurdish town under attack from IS jihadists.

Three months ago, Karwan Baban said goodbye to Germany and drove his minibus to his native Kurdistan to join the peshmerga battling Islamic State jihadists.

After a five-day road trip through Austria, eastern Europe and Turkey to northern Iraq, he slipped into his peshmerga uniform: "Herr Baban" the Duesseldorf import-export manager had become "Colonel Karwan".

U.N. envoy Espen Barth Eide on Wednesday urged Cyprus and Turkey to take steps to ease tensions over the divided island's energy search, warning it could harm the peace process.

Cyprus on Tuesday suspended its participation in U.N.-led peace negotiations in protest over moves by Turkey to undermine its right to exploit gas and oil reserves.

At least 14 people were killed as protests by pro-Kurdish demonstrators raged across Turkey over the government's lack of action to save the Syrian town of Kobane, officials said Wednesday.

The international community should immediately act to defend the besieged Syrian town of Kobane from the jihadist Islamic State group, the UN's envoy to Syria said on Tuesday.

"The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS (Islamic State) is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so. We need to act now," Staffan de Mistura said in a statement.

One person was killed on Tuesday in southeast Turkey when police clashed with hundreds of pro-Kurdish protesters demonstrating over the onslaught by jihadists on the Syrian border town of Kobane.

There were conflicting reports about how the 25-year-old protester was killed in the clashes in the city of Mus, with the Hurriyet newspaper saying the protester died of a gunshot wound after being caught in crossfire.

Cyprus said on Tuesday that it will not attend U.N.-led peace negotiations scheduled for this week in protest over Turkish moves to undermine the divided island's search for energy.

Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Dervis Eroglu had been due to meet inside the U.N.-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia on Thursday morning.

Iran criticized the "passivity of the international community" Tuesday regarding the besieged Syrian border town of Kobane and said the world should help President Bashar Assad confront "the terrorists".

The comments by foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkhan came shortly after Turkey's president said Kobane was on the verge of falling to jihadists fighting for the Islamic State (IS) group.

Iran said Tuesday it had seized explosives destined for an attack on one of its holy cities and that more than 130 members of militant extremist groups had been arrested.