ISTANBUL: Turkish authorities have detained scores of suspects over alleged links with Daesh militants in a nationwide sweep ahead of New Year celebrations, the interior minister said on Saturday.
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Ali Yerlikaya said that 189 suspects had been detained as part of simultaneous operations dubbed “HEROES-38” carried out in 37 cities including Istanbul.
Twenty-seven suspects were detained in the capital Ankara alone and 22 in Istanbul, he said.
Turkiye has in recent months intensified operations against Daesh militants who have claimed several deadly attacks on Turkish soil including the Jan. 1, 2017 attack on a nightclub in Istanbul which killed 39 people.
On Friday, Turkish security forces detained 32 Daesh suspects including three senior members who were planning attacks on churches and synagogues as well as the Iraqi Embassy.
On Thursday, President Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara will reinforce its newly established permanent bases in northern Iraq in the coming months, after 12 Turkish soldiers were killed in the region.
The twelve were killed last week in northern Iraq in clashes with the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party based there.
“In recent years, we have built hundreds of km-long roads in northern Iraq for our permanent bases. We carry out the same activities in new places we have controlled,” Erdogan told a televised meeting in Ankara.
“By the arrival of spring, we will have completed the infrastructure of our newly established bases (in northern Iraq), and make terrorists unable to set foot in the region.”
Turkish forces regularly carry out strikes in neighboring Iraq as part of the country’s offensive against PKK militants. Since 2019, Turkiye has launched a series of operations in northern Iraq after Erdogan’s declaration of “a new security concept in combating terrorism” and plan to “neutralize terrorism and terrorists at source.”