Turkiye steps up anti-Daesh raids, arresting 125 suspects

Turkiye on Wednesday detained another 125 Daesh group suspects in a string of nationwide raids, a minister said, following warnings that Daesh 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.

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

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

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

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

The anti-Daesh raids began just days after Turkiye’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 organizing suicide attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkiye and Europe.

In the early hours of January 1, 2017, Daesh 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 Turkiye, saying they would “face the might of our state and the unity of our nation.”