Turkish police arrest 41 ISIS suspects

The Turkish police arrested this Wednesday 41 suspects of belonging to the jihadist group Islamic State (ISIS). Turkey’s Interior Minister, Ali Yerlikaya, announced on the social network the northern Istanbul and Düzce, as well as several in the Central Anatolia and Aegean regions.

“We want our holy nation to know that we will not allow terrorists to even open their eyes. We only have one objective: to continue fighting with the help of your prayers and your support until the last terrorist is neutralized,” the minister promised.

These arrests are in addition to the eight made on Monday in Istanbul, as announced by the Ministry of the Interior in a statement. Two of these suspected members of ISIS were captured in a house in Beykoz, a district in the north of Istanbul, where a large quantity of chemicals was seized. A man identified only as KA resided in that home and who, presumably, had knowledge of manufacturing explosives. “KA was preparing to carry out a bomb attack and it was discovered that he was testing the explosive capacity of various chemicals,” the ministry explained in a statement.

Public television TRT stated that KA is a Syrian citizen, while his roommate, also arrested, is of Afghan origin. According to this channel, the alleged ISIS militants were planning to attack the May Day celebrations, which the Interior Minister used to justify the ban on demonstrations in the central Taksim Square, in Istanbul. However, the Government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years prohibited commemorating Labor Day – and a multitude of other marches and protests – in that location, forcing unions to use other places.

At the end of January, ISIS claimed responsibility for the murder of a parishioner in a Catholic church in Istanbul, in what was the first attack by the jihadist group on Turkish soil since the Club Reina massacre on January 1, 2017. The perpetrators of the attack on the church were a citizen of Russian origin and another Tajik, which focused attention on the possibility that they were members of the Central Asian branch of ISIS, known as the Islamic State of Greater Khorasan (ISIS-K or ISKP, for its acronym in English). However, subsequent investigation has shown that they arrived in Turkey from Syria, where the cells of the jihadist group are rebuilding and have increased their attacks.

Two of the perpetrators of the massacre at the Crocus hall in Moscow on March 22 also spent several weeks in Istanbul, although government sources explained to this newspaper that “they were not radicalized in Turkey” and only traveled to the city. of the Bosphorus to be able to renew their residence permit in Russia, where they lived. Both were Tajik citizens and linked to ISIS-K, which has led Turkey to suspend the visa exemption enjoyed by citizens of Tajikistan.

Since Yerlikaya arrived at the head of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior last June, operations and raids against alleged terrorist cells have multiplied. In these 11 months, some 1,500 raids have been carried out against ISIS in which more than 3,000 suspects have been arrested. Of them, at least 718 are charged and in preventive detention; another 566 have been released with surveillance measures.

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