Turkish army engineers arrived by boat in Beirut on Friday to join the enlarged UN peacekeeping operation policing a cease-fire between Israel and Hizbullah.
The 95 soldiers arrived on two warships, with the remaining 166 members of the team due to fly into the Lebanese capital to help with reconstruction after the July-August war in which more than 1,200 people died in Lebanon, mostly civilians.
Their arrival comes despite vocal opposition from the war-ravaged nation's Armenian community which accuses the Turks' Ottoman ancestors of genocide.
Turkey, a key regional ally of Israel, is the first Muslim country to contribute troops to the beefed-up UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that will eventually number 15,000 men. Muslim nations Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Qatar have also pledged soldiers to the planned 15,000-strong force, but they have yet to arrive.
The Turks will be stationed in the village of Shaatit, 7.5 kilometres (five miles) from the southern port of Tyre, the first Turkish deployment in Lebanon since the Ottomans left in 1918, shortly before their empire collapsed at the end of World War I.
A small advance team of engineers, who are due to work mostly on the reconstruction of roads and bridges as well as demining, arrived on October 10 but Turkey is not expected to contribute any more ground troops to the UN force.
Overriding widespread domestic opposition, the Turkish parliament approved a government motion on September 5 to contribute troops to UNIFIL following a cease-fire that ended 34 days of fighting in Lebanon.
The Turkish government has said it will contribute a total of 681 troops.
A Turkish frigate is already serving in the German-led naval task force patrolling the Lebanese coast to prevent arms being smuggled to Hizbullah, and the navy has said it will also send two corvettes.
Ankara says participating in UNIFIL will enhance the regional influence of Turkey. The mainly Muslim state, which has a secular government, has good ties with Israel and the Arab states.
Parliament authorised the government to send a naval force to patrol the eastern Mediterranean, deploy land troops for non-combat missions, help train the Lebanese army and support allied countries in naval and air transport.
Members of Lebanon's 140,000-strong Armenian community have staged several demonstrations in protest at the troop deployment because Turkey refuses to recognise the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians by the Ottomans as genocide.
But the Armenians are not expected to mount further protests, despite accusations Turkey is seeking to establish a "new Ottoman empire".
"Their return is for economic reasons and to revive their dream of a new Ottoman empire in the Middle East," said Armenian Lebanese MP Agop Pakradouni. "We don't understand why the Lebanese government is enthusiastic for the Turks to come."
But a fellow Armenian Lebanese MP, Hagop Kassarjian, said the community had to accept the facts on the ground.
"Even though we're Armenian and we've protested, we're Lebanese after all. We did what we have to do but the Lebanese government has taken a decision and so has the international community," he said.
Turkey says 300,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks, died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence and sided with invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire fell apart during World War I.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their ancestors were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings, which they maintain can only be seen as genocide.