The government of Turkey confirmed that it had arrested 357 people on Tuesday in nationwide operations against Islamic State terrorists suspected of plotting attacks on New Year’s Eve – following a multi-hour operation on Monday that killed three police officers.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya published a video on Tuesday of Turkish security forces engaged in the operation, listing multiple federal agencies involved in the mass arrests and the 21 provinces where they were deployed.
“Just as we have never given opportunities to those trying to bring this homeland to its knees through terrorism up to this day, we will never give them opportunities in the future,” Yerlikaya asserted.
The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that 110 of those arrested were in the Istanbul area and 41 of them were identified as having ties to the reported Islamic State terrorists implicated in the shootout with police on Monday.
“A statement from the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office also said that it issued arrest warrants for 17 ISIS terror suspects, including 11 foreign nationals,” Anadolu reported. “It said the Terror Crimes Investigation Bureau identified the suspects through analyses of digital materials seized during previous Daesh-related [ISIS] investigations.”
The arrests followed a deadly, multi-hour siege of a suspected Islamic State hideout in Turkey’s northwest Yalova province on Monday. The operation lasted over seven hours, beginning around 2 a.m. on Monday, in part complicated by the presence of women and children in the targeted home. According to the interior minister, police killed six terrorists, all Turkish citizens, and rescued five women and six children from the home. Three police officers were killed in the ensuing conflict.
The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet relayed that the dramatic operation affected nearly the entirety of the Elmalı district of Yalova.
“As the clashes spilled into the streets, five schools in the area were closed for the day,” the newspaper reported. “Authorities also cut off natural gas and electricity as a precaution, while civilians and vehicles were barred from entering the neighborhood.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYD4Xx-p2yw
Law enforcement authorities accused the suspects arrested and killed of working to empower the Islamic State jihadist terror organization within Turkey. Specifically, some of those implicated were allegedly involved in alleged plots to conduct deadly terrorist attacks on New Year’s Eve. Authorities did not list specific targets but indicated that mass gatherings to celebrate the New Year, including some religious events, were potentially threatened.
Jihadist threats to New Year gatherings are an especially sensitive issue in Turkey, given years of threats and deadly attacks in December and January. The most notorious of these events was the Islamic State shooting of the Reina nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve 2016, which continued into the early hours of 2017. That incident killed 39 people and left dozens injured. Uzbek citizen Abdulkadir Masharipov was arrested and charged with orchestrating the attack on behalf of the Islamic State. In 2020, a Turkish court sentenced him to life in prison plus an additional 1,368 years in prison on charges of murder and attempted murder.
The Reina nightclub attack occurred a year after Turkish authorities arrested several alleged Islamic State terrorists for a separate, failed New Year’s plot in which police claimed the suspects were planning to bomb Kizilay Square in Ankara during the welcoming of the New Year. It also concluded the year in which jihadist suicide bombers targeted Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport, killing 41 people and injuring hundreds of others.
The multiple police operations nationwide this week preceded similar actions to curtail the influence of the Islamic State in the country. On December 25, Istanbul police revealed the arrest of over 100 other suspects tied to alleged Islamic State activities – also accused of attempting mass killings to thwart both Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. As explained by Istanbul authorities, 115 people were arrested last week, out of 137 identified suspects, and police raided stockpiles of weapons in 124 different locations.
In response to the arrests on Thursday, Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement vowing further action against the Islamic State.
“We will continue our determined, multi‑layered and uncompromising fight against the blood‑stained terrorists who threaten the peace of our nation and the security of our state — both within our borders and beyond,” the president promised.
Erdogan, a vocal supporter of the jihadist terror organization Hamas, has for years faced allegations of ties to the Islamic State, particularly at the height of that group’s “caliphate” experiment in Syria and Iraq in the 2010s. In 2014, the defunct Turkish newspaper Zaman quoted an alleged nurse in Turkey complaining that her hospital on the border was forcing health workers to treat wounded Islamic State terrorists. Alleged Islamic State terrorists also explicitly accused Erdogan of supporting the group.
“Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It [Turkey] showed us affection. Large [numbers] of our mujahedeen received medical treatment in Turkey,” an alleged Islamic State terrorist told the Jerusalem Post in 2014. “We do not have the support of Saudi Arabia, but many Saudi families who believe in jihad do assist us. But anyhow, we will no longer need it, soon.”
The Islamic State “caliphate” collapsed in 2017 when the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led group Erdogan identifies as a terrorist organization, alongside U.S. forces liberated the “capital” of the Islamic State experiment, Raqqa, Syria.
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