BRUSSELS - NATO allies sought on Tuesday to strengthen Turkey's defenses along its Syrian border after the United States withdrew its missile defense battery for modernization, leaving Ankara exposed as Russia intensifies actions in the area.

Germany has also removed its Patriot battery supporting Turkish air defenses on the frontier, leaving Spain as lone NATO ally with Patriots there, and raising strategy questions at a time when Ankara says it faces Russian airspace violations.

"We need to support Turkey," Canada's Foreign Minister Stephane Dion said on arrival in Brussels for meetings with his NATO peers, as offers of ships and aircraft began to trickle in from allies.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will also push for other NATO members to do more to protect Turkey as well as to step up actions in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria, a senior State Department official said.

"We have a number of allies who are considering increasing their effort to support Turkish sovereignty and security, but also looking at operations in Syria, adding to what the French have been doing over recent weeks," the official told reporters. "The secretary will make the case that we need even more."

Foreign ministers are expected to formally agree on Tuesday to send more military hardware to Turkey's borders and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he expected a decisions on a package "within weeks".

NATO deployed its Patriot missiles along the border in January 2013, to shoot down any missiles from Syria's conflict fired into Turkish territory. Ankara had appealed to the alliance to maintain the defenses even before the flare-up of tensions with Russia over airspace violations.(Reuters)