Turkish security forces on Wednesday said they had detained at least 15 suspects in operations against the terrorist groups Daesh and al-Qaida in Istanbul.
Anti-terror police launched simultaneous operations at 12 locations in Istanbul against “foreign terrorist fighters,” said security sources, who asked to remain anonymous due to restrictions on speaking to the media.
They added that the 15 people arrested in the operation were all foreign nationals.
Türkiye has been working on unearthing Daesh plots and apprehending possible suspects.
Late last month, police arrested 19 foreign nationals in Ankara who had allegedly been in contact with Daesh terrorists in conflict zones after capturing a senior figure of the terrorist group in Istanbul in late February.
A 36-year-old Tunisian national identified as M.B., who used the code name "Abu Huzaifah," served as a so-called “qadi” or judge for the terrorist group in Tal Abyad, Manbij and Raqqa in Syria between 2014 and 2018. He was apprehended in an operation aided by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) on Feb. 24.
Interrogation of his accomplices revealed he had ongoing ties to Daesh cadres in Syria and contacts in Türkiye.
Earlier in 2023, police had apprehended another Daesh terrorist who was preparing for an attack in Istanbul.
In 2013, Türkiye became one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group. However, the country 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. As a result, Türkiye launched operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks, including several counterterrorism operations in Syria.
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 roots of terrorist groups.
Since its formal defeat in Iraq in 2017 and significant loss of territory in Syria since 2015, Daesh fighters have been leading their operations underground besides losing their leaders to military operations. The group’s last three leaders, all Iraqis, were killed in Syria in recent years outside the 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 the 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 out significant insurgent-style attacks.
