DAESH vows to target Turkey's southeastern towns in Friday sermons

The DAESH terrorist organization has announced to their militants, through Friday sermons in mosques in DAESH strongholds in Syria, plans to expand terrorism in Turkey, indicating that several towns in southeastern Turkey are their current targets. According to a report in Yeni Şafak daily, police intelligence reports said that in sermons last Friday in DAESH-controlled mosques in Bab, Manbij and Jarablous, the terrorist organization announced that the southeastern province of Gaziantep – specifically the districts of Kilis, Nizip and Karkamış – are among their primary targets.

The reports also indicated that Turkish-origin militants within DAESH, trained as bomb experts, saboteurs and snipers, have infiltrated Turkish territory and were instructed to commit terror attacks in Turkey. Thanks to shared intelligence, many of these would-be terrorists had been neutralized through operations by security forces.

DAESH claims that Turkey has "deviated" from Islam through accepting rule through democracy, as they assert voting is prohibited as it effectively places the votes of people over what they interpret as the laws of God. DAESH also asserts that praying behind imams appointed by the Turkish state is against the religion of Islam.

The terrorist organization has already raised concerns with the increased targeting of Kilis by rockets, and the latest suicide attack in Gaziantep with a bomb-laden car is understood as implementation.

Previously, the 11th edition of Dabiq, DAESH's English-language online magazine, had a cover with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaking to United States President Barack Obama, and threatened Erdoğan and Turkey for being a part of the NATO alliance.

At the beginning of September, a pro-DAESH social media account issued a death warrant for Erdoğan, due to Turkey's cooperation with the U.S.-led coalition to fight against DAESH. Declared as an "apostate" for supporting and collaborating with the U.S.-led counter-terror coalition, after Turkish jets targeted DAESH positions in Syria and Northern Iraq, Erdoğan was sentenced to death in a putative fatwa published through a social media account.

DAESH has released a video calling for Turkish people to "conquer Istanbul and Turkey from the ones who cooperate with the West," referring to President Erdoğan as a "Satan" who allegedly sold his country to the U.S. and Western powers and harshly criticized him for supporting the U.S.-led coalition against DAESH. Speaking in Turkish, the unidentified DAESH terrorist says that it is necessary for the people of Turkey to rebel against the "atheists, crusaders and 'Satans' who fool them and make them a slave to the crusaders."

"The Turkish people should reject democracy, secularism, human laws, and all types of other evils. Those who believe in the fight in the way of God, while disbelievers fight in the way of Satan," read the terrorist message.