Turkey arrests 94 Islamic State suspects ahead of New Year
Turkish police have arrested 94 suspected members of Islamic State in raids across the country on Monday, police and state media have said.
The arrests come days before the New Year rings in and two months after the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed.
In previous years, police have detained militants in late December since a gunman opened fire in a nightclub on New Year’s Day in 2017, killing 39 people. Islamic State took responsibility for the attack.
Raids were carried out in the central provinces of Ankara, Kayseri and Adana, and in the southeast in Batman, Turkish state news agency Andolu reported.
In the early hours of the morning in Batman, about 400 counterterrorism police officers arrested 22 people in simultaneous raids seizing weapons, ammunition and documents, Andolu said.
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In Ankara, 30 Iraqis, two Syrians and one Moroccan were detained in the raids, and in Kayseri nine Iraqi citizens were held while four Syrian and two Iraqis were detained in Adana, according to Andolu.
Istanbul police said it also arrested suspected militants in the morning raids, capturing 20 Turks and four foreign nationals to prevent potential attacks ahead of New Year celebrations.
US President Donald Trump announced Baghdadi’s death on 27 October. He was killed in a raid by American forces in Syria's northwestern Idlib province near the Turkish border.
Two days later, Turkish police detained dozens of Islamic State suspects believed to have been plotting attacks targeting Turkey's Republic Day celebrations.
The Turkish government has said it will repatriate most IS detainees to their home countries by the end of the year.
Ankara has accused its European allies of being too slow to take back their citizens who travelled to the Middle East to join Islamic State.
Turkey's Nato allies have been worried that its October offensive into northeastern Syria against the Kurdish YPG militia could lead to Islamic State suspects and their families escaping from the prisons and camps run by the YPG.
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