President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a phone call on Sunday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, in which the leaders discussed the crisis in Syria and a French citizen detained in Turkey.

A statement from Macron's office on Sunday said Macron had demanded the release and return to France of journalist Loup Bureau, who was detained on terrorism charges.

"The two presidents agreed to make further contact, and at the ministerial level as well, in order to arrive at a positive outcome," the statement from the Elysée Palace said.

Bureau was detained in July last at the Habur border post in the southeastern province of Şırnak on the Iraqi-Turkish border on charges of membership to the PKK-linked YPG terror group.

They also discussed the situation in Syria, Iraq and the Gulf region as well as the battle against terrorism, with France working to create a specialist contact group to discuss Syria on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly.