Turkey’s latest anti-terror raids bring total arrests to nearly 600 in a week, following intelligence warnings of planned holiday attacks.
ISTANBUL: Turkish authorities have detained 125 more suspected Islamic State group members in nationwide operations.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced the arrests in 25 provinces on Wednesday, raising the total detained over the past week to nearly 600.
“We captured 125 Daesh suspects in simultaneous operations carried out in 25 provinces this morning,” Yerlikaya wrote on social media platform X.
The raids follow intelligence warnings that the extremist group was planning attacks during Christmas and New Year celebrations.
On Christmas Day, security forces arrested 115 IS suspects based on this intelligence.
A major operation on Monday turned deadly in the northwestern coastal town of Yalova. IS militants opened fire on police, killing three officers and wounding nine others.
Six IS militants were killed in the hours-long gun battle that followed.
Another 357 suspects with ties to IS were arrested across 21 provinces the following day.
The current wave of raids began shortly after Turkey’s intelligence agency captured a senior IS figure on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The suspect, Mehmet Goren, had allegedly been tasked with organising suicide attacks in several countries.
Turkey has suffered deadly IS attacks in the past, including a 2017 New Year assault on an Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people.
In his social media post, Yerlikaya issued a stark warning to anyone seeking to attack Turkey.
He said they would “face the might of our state and the unity of our nation”.
