ISIL held test drive ahead of plot, prosecutor says

In the Jan. 18 letter written as part of a probe launched into an ISIL plot in the city, the prosecutor said that now arrested suspects Cafer Erdem and Baran Yalçın on Oct. 22, 2015, conducted a test drive with the vehicle, which was purchased to be loaded with explosives and then exploded in an attack. 

The letter, which included a demand for a technical surveillance decision to be taken in order to shed light on ISIL’s suicide bomb attack plots, also contained the information that some 15 foreign suicide bombers had been sent from the group’s Syria stronghold of Raqqa to Diyarbakır. The prosecutor added that these 15 people were not allowed to leave the cell houses and their needs were met by two members of the group. 

According to information from the probe dossier, ISIL tasked suspect Nihat Turan as the group’s Diyarbakır “emir” and that he was running organizational activities in line with orders from a leader in Raqqa. The prosecutor also demanded a legal pursuance to reveal Turan’s plots targeting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the outlawed the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), as well as other Salafist groups inside the country. 

Saying that Turan had planned to move forward the attack organized to take place after the Nov. 1, 2015, general election due to his suspicions that the plots were being uncovered or tracked by security teams, the prosecutor added that the PKK and KCK were to be targeted. 

Meanwhile, police conducting a search of two computers which were seized during a raid on an ISIL cell in the southeastern province of Gaziantep last month have found reports on how to attract more adherents to the group, as well as how to ignite a civil war based on ethnicity in Turkey that would eventually benefit their advance.

According to the report, which police confirmed to be sent to ISIL’s headquarters, a search was conducted on religion-based terrorist organizations in Turkey and stated these groups had made some mistakes in their structuring period and that ISIL would not make these mistakes. In the reports, it was also noted that a Turk-Kurd-based civil war which could be initiated with a series of terror attacks would play into the group’s hands.