Türkiye has arrested at least seven people with suspected ties to the Daesh terrorist group in Istanbul, security forces said Friday.
Turkish police carried out simultaneous operations at 12 different locations across the province to apprehend the suspects, sources noted, requesting anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media.
No further information was provided.
In 2013, Türkiye became one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group and it has since been attacked by Daesh multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks and four armed assaults.
Terrorists from Daesh and other groups such as the PKK and its Syrian wing, the YPG, rely on a network of members and supporters in Türkiye. In response, Ankara has been intensifying its crackdown on the terrorists and their links at home, conducting pinpoint operations and freezing assets to eliminate the terrorist groups by their roots.
Last month, simultaneous raids in 23 Turkish provinces nabbed 74 suspects affiliated with Daesh. Operations spanning from Diyarbakır to Yalova in northwestern Türkiye targeted a network seeking new recruits for the terrorist group as it sees its power dwindling after it emerged as a formidable threat in Iraq and Syria in the past decade.
In the past, Daesh would claim victories only dreamt of by al-Qaida, seizing vast stretches of territory that spanned the heart of the Middle East. At its height, the terrorist group controlled roughly one-third of Syria and 40% of Iraq amid widespread instability, claiming major cities, including Mosul and Raqqa, and imposing an iron-fisted rule that attracted people worldwide.
Its gruesome violence spread all around the globe, with videos of human immolation and beheadings circulating online. It later directed and inspired vicious terrorist attacks that killed innocents in London, Paris, Istanbul, New York City and Orlando, Florida.
Since its formal defeat in Iraq in 2017 and significant loss of territory in Syria starting in 2015, Daesh fighters have been continuing to plot attacks in the region and beyond, with local branches and sleeper cells operating in the Middle East, Africa, and South and Central Asia.
The group’s last three leaders, all Iraqis, were killed in Syria in recent years outside areas it once purported to rule.
The last Daesh leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the successor of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi who committed suicide during a U.S. raid earlier in 2022, was killed in mid-October last year by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in southern Syria, as confirmed by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
The group’s founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hunted down by Americans in a raid in Idlib in October 2019. Remaining Daesh militants, whose numbers reach thousands, mostly hide in remote territory across the region but still possess the ability to carry out significant insurgent-style attacks.
In late April, Türkiye announced that its National Intelligence Organization (MIT) had eliminated the successor of al-Qurayshi in an operation in the Syrian town of Jandaris.