Over 600 detained in anti-terror operations across Turkey

ISTANBUL

DHA photo

More than 600 suspects have been detained in anti-terror police operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as Turkish security forces launched a series of vast anti-terror operations in multiple provinces across Turkey since July 24.

Twenty-one suspected members of the PKK were detained, with weapons and PKK-linked documents seized, in an anti-PKK operation in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on July 26 as anti-terror police officers raided 44 homes in Diyarbakır’s Bismil, Hazro, Lice and Dicle districts, Doğan News Agency reported on July 26.

As many as 28 suspects, including 13 foreign nationals, were detained in anti-ISIL operations in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, the eastern province of Elazığ and the Central Anatolian province of Malatya on July 25 as the Gaziantep Police Department launched a series of operations in a bid to prevent militants from using Gaziantep as a passage to areas of conflict, the report also said.

Turkey has long been accused of turning a blind eye to jihadists traversing Turkish territory on the way to Syria. Amid the latest crackdown against ISIL, Ankara has also taken the opportunity to move against other groups that challenge its rule, including the PKK and DHKP-C.

The number of the people detained in countrywide anti-ISIL and anti-PKK police operations reached more than 600 with the anti-ISIL operations late July 25 and the anti-PKK operation in Diyarbakır early July 26.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on July 25 in a press conference in Ankara that 590 people were detained over a two-day period in a series of anti-terror operations against each ISIL, the PKK and the Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C).

Turkish security forces have been conducting operations against ISIL, the PKK, the DHKP-C and the PKK’s youth wing, the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), in over two dozens of provinces as part of the nationwide anti-terror operations launched on July 24.

Police on July 24 launched major raids in 22 provinces against suspected ISIL and PKK members after a wave of deadly violence in the country, detaining 288 people.

The raids on July 25 took place in 14 provinces including Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir, as well as Konya in central Turkey, Manisa in the west, Adana in the south, Adıyaman, Şanlıurfa and Tunceli (Dersim) in the southeast and Erzincan in the east.