Wanted: Turkey offers $14mn reward for capture of 23 IS militants

Turkey’s Interior Ministry has offered rewards worth more than 42 million Turkish liras ($14mn) for any information leading to the capture of 23 Islamic State group militants.

The list of Turkey’s most “wanted [IS] terrorists” is split into five colour-coded categories with red being seen as the highest-value targets, followed by blue, green, orange and grey, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Tuesday.

Three IS militants, Ilhami Balı, Mustafa Dokumaci and Yunus Durmaz, have all been placed on the red list with the authorities promising to pay out up to four million lira ($1.4mn) for information that leads to their arrest.

According to the authorities, Bali is the IS “emir” or leader in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, while Durmaz is believed to be currently preparing to carry out an attack and Dokumaci is believed to be leader of the IS-linked Dokumacilar group that has been specifically targeting Kurds.

The 20 other alleged IS members are all on the blue list, with rewards of up to 1.5 million lira ($530,000) to those who assist in their capture. At least three women are believed to be on the list.

Turkey has been hard-hit by a string of major attacks claimed by IS or Dokumacilar.

IS was behind the 19 March attack on Istanbul’s busy and touristic Istiklal Avenue in which four tourists and the bomber were killed. Almost 40 others were wounded. It has also been linked to the killing of 10 mainly German tourists in January.

Dokumacilar, meanwhile, is believed to be behind the 10 October Ankara bombings in which 103 people were killed as well as the Suruc bombings in July 2015 where more than 30 pro-Kurdish activists were killed.

Suruc helped to spark a revival in Kurdish militancy, with the Kurdish Worker’s Party blaming authorities for turning a blind eye to IS and ending a more than two-year ceasefire. They have since carried out multiple attacks that have largely been levelled at security services but have also killed civilians.