Turkey banned 53,000 foreign fighters so far: Erdoğan

ANKARA

Turkey has deported 5,000 people suspected of being linked to terrorist activities and banned 53,000 people from entering the country, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said. 

“So far, we have deported 5,000 terror suspects, including those with South Asian nationalities, and we have barred 53,000 people from entry,” Erdoğan said in a joint press conference with his Indonesian counterpart, Joko Widodo, on July 6. 

Erdoğan said the main agenda at the meeting was security cooperation and the struggle against terror. 

“We will enhance our fight against malicious organizations, which use our holy religion for their own interests such as ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] and FETÖ [Fethullahist Terrorist Organization], that pose threats to both countries,” he added.  

“We have cleaned our border territories from ISIL terrorists and ensured 100,000 of our Syrian brothers and sisters’ safe return to those territories,” he said. 

“We have neutralized 3,000 ISIL terrorists including their officials with the help of the Euphrates Shield Operation,” he added.

Erdoğan said Turkey will continue its “determination in the fight against foreign terrorist fighters.”

“We need to prevent ISIL terrorists, who were removed from the territories they occupied, posing a threat to my country or to the source countries,” he said. 

“We are entering a very critical phase in which we need to maximize the sharing of intelligence and have to be much more careful,” he said.