Turkey’s government says it has detained more than 100 Islamic State suspects in nationwide raids, as the group shows signs of intensified regional activity after a period of relative dormancy.
Turkey’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced the Wednesday morning arrests in a social media post, saying Turkish authorities rounded up 125 suspects across 25 provinces, including Ankara.
The operation is the third of its kind in less than a week during the holiday season, and follows a deadly shootout on Tuesday between Turkish police and suspected IS members in the northwestern city of Yalova.
“Those who seek to harm our brotherhood, our unity, our togetherness … will only face the might of our state and the unity of our nation,” wrote Yerlikaya.
Tuesday’s clash killed three Turkish police and six suspected IS members, all Turkish nationals. A day later, Turkish security forces arrested 357 suspected IS members in a coordinated crackdown.
Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul earlier this week, said Turkish forces have “intensified their operations” against IS sleeper cells during the holiday period, a time when the group has previously staged attacks in the country.
In 2017, when the group still held large swaths of neighbouring Syria and Iraq before being vanquished on the battlefield, IS attacked an Istanbul nightclub during New Year’s celebrations, killing 39 people. Istanbul prosecutor’s office said Turkish police had received intelligence that operatives were “planning attacks in Turkey against non-Muslims in particular” this holiday season.
On top of maintaining sleeper cells in Turkey, IS is still active in Syria, with which Turkey shares a 900-kilometre (560-mile) border, and has carried out a spate of attacks there since the ouster of former President Bashar al-Assad last year.
The United States military has waged extensive strikes against IS in central and northeastern Syria this month, killing or capturing about 25 fighters from the group over the past two weeks, according to the US Central Command.
Those operations followed the killing of two American soldiers and an interpreter in an attack in the Syrian city of Palmyra by what the US said was an IS gunman.
Source: Al Jazeera