Turkey scrambled fighter jets after Syrian helicopters flew close to the border, the army said Sunday, hiking tensions following last month's downing of a Turkish plane.

Four F-16 warplanes took off from Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey after Syrian helicopters flew four miles closer to the border than is normal, the statement said.

Russian technicians were involved in the taking down of the Turkish fighter jet by the Syrian military last week, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

Quoting Middle Eastern diplomatic sources, the Times reported that the decision to down the Turkish jet was intended to signal a warning to NATO to stay out of the conflict raging in Syria for over a year.

Turkey's military insisted Sunday that a jet fighter shot down by Syrian forces on June 22 was in international airspace, and not inside Syria, as claimed in a newspaper report citing U.S. intelligence.

The Turkish F-4 Phantom "was downed over the eastern Mediterranean in international airspace ... while it was flying solo and unarmed, and testing our existing radars' performance in the region," the army's general staff said in a statement posted on its website.

Both official media and an opposition group on Sunday branded as a failure a world powers deal on a transition plan for Syria a day after more than 80 people were reported killed in violence nationwide.

World powers meeting in Geneva on Saturday agreed a transition plan that could include current regime members, but the West did not see any role for President Bashar Assad in a new unity government.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks with a prominent Kurdish lawmaker in a rare meeting Saturday to try and resolve a decades-old separatist conflict.

No statement was issued to the press after the one-and-a-half hour meeting which followed Leyla Zana's comments in a recent newspaper interview praising Erdogan as the head of the strongest government in Turkey's history.

Maronite Patriarch Beshar al-Rahi reiterated on Saturday his call on rival Lebanese foes to renew their commitment to the 1943 national pact, urging Muslims and Christians to coexist.

“I have already said that we need to go back to the 1943 national pact where only one state existed,” al-Rahi told reporters upon his arrival in Beirut following his trip to Turkey.

The advisor of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reiterated that 11 Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria last month haven’t crossed the border to Turkey.

In remarks to An Nahar newspaper published Saturday, the advisor said: “Turkey has nothing to do with the issue and the kidnapping didn’t take place on our territories.”

The Turkish Parliament voted Friday to extend its troops' mission in Lebanon under U.N. peacekeeping mission UNIFIL by one year.

The extension is the sixth since Turkey initially approved the mission in September 2006. It takes effect from September this year.

Turkey is to pick a new long-range air defense missile system soon, as tension builds with neighboring Syria, media and foreign diplomats said Friday.

Companies vying for the four billion dollar (3.2 billion euro) contract include Raytheon and Lockheed Martin of the United States, Rosoboronexport of Russia, CPMIEC of China and the French-Italian consortium, Eurosam, they said.

An explosion targeting a pipeline in eastern Turkey has cut off Iranian natural gas shipments to the country, Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday citing sources from the energy ministry.

The blast occurred at 2300 GMT Wednesday in an area between villages of Hidirli and Kalender in the eastern province of Agri, said Anatolia.