Turkey steps up anti-IS raids, arresting 125 suspects

ISTANBUL: Turkey on Wednesday detained another 125 Islamic State group suspects in a string of nationwide raids, a minister said, following warnings that IS militants were planning attacks over the holidays.

The latest arrests raised to nearly 600 the total number detained over the past week.

“We captured 125 Daesh suspects in simultaneous operations carried out in 25 provinces this morning,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

On Christmas Day, the security forces arrested 115 IS suspects following intelligence warning that the extremist group was “planning attacks during Christmas and New Year celebrations”, the Istanbul’s prosecutor’s office said.

During another nationwide arrest operation on Monday, IS militants opened fire on police in the northwestern coastal town of Yalova, killing three officers and wounding nine others, the interior minister said.

Six IS militants were also killed in the hours-long gun battle in Yalova, which lies on the shores of the Sea of Marmara about 90 kilometres (55 miles) southeast of Istanbul.

A day later, another 357 suspects with ties to IS were arrested in 21 different provinces, the minister said.

The anti-IS raids began just days after Turkey’s intelligence agency captured a Turkish national who holds a senior role within IS in a raid on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, state news agency Anadolu reported on December 22.

The suspect, Mehmet Goren, had allegedly been tasked with organising suicide attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Europe.

In the early hours of January 1, 2017, IS militants staged a deadly New Year attack on a nightclub in Istanbul that left 39 people dead, mostly foreigners.

The Uzbek gunman, who survived, was sentenced to 40 life sentences.

In his post on X, Yerlikaya issued a warning to anyone seeking to attack Turkey, saying they would “face the might of our state and the unity of our nation”.