ISTANBUL // Turkish police detained more than 400 suspected members of ISIL in nationwide antiterror raids on Sunday, just over a month after an attack on an Istanbul nightclub claimed by the extremists.
The detainees were rounded up in Turkey’s biggest police operation so far against ISIL since the New Year attack which saw 39 people killed when a gunman opened fire inside the Reina nightclub.
Those detained included foreigners and those suspected of planning attacks in Turkey, the Dogan and Anadolu news agencies reported. Anadolu said according to the latest figure, 423 suspects were detained so far.
The operation around the country saw 150 suspects rounded up in Sanliurfa in the south-east and 47 in the nearby city of Gaziantep close to the Syrian border which has a known extremist presence, Dogan said.
Sixty suspects, mostly foreigners, were detained in four districts in the capital Ankara. Dozens more were arrested in provinces from Bursa in the west to Bingol in the east.
In the usually peaceful Aegean city of Izmir, nine people suspected of travelling to and from Syria and planning attacks in the city were detained, Anadolu said.
One of the suspects detained in Izmir — a Syrian identified only as EA — is said to have been in touch with people smugglers in a bid to help the ISIL members escape to Europe, Anadolu said.
Eighteen people were detained in Istanbul and the neighbouring province of Kocaeli on suspicion of planning attacks. Another 14 foreigners were due to be deported, including 10 children.
In addition to the latest arrests, Turkey says at least 780 people including 350 foreigners, remain in detention over suspected links to the extremist group. Some of them have already been convicted.
Thirty-nine people, mainly foreigners, were killed on New Year’s night when a gunman went on the rampage inside a plush Istanbul nightclub.
ISIL claimed the massacre, its first clear claim for a major attack in Turkey although it had been blamed for several bombings in 2016.
The suspected attacker, Uzbek national Abdulgadir Masharipov, was detained on January 16 after over two weeks on the run. Authorities say he has confessed to the massacre.
The Hurriyet daily reported after the attack that ISIL also planned a simultaneous New Year’s strike in Ankara but dropped the plot after arrests by the Turkish authorities.
An Istanbul court on Friday placed a dozen people under arrest ahead of trial over the nightclub plot, including Masharipov’s wife Zarina Nurullayeva.
In her statement to investigators published in Turkish media, she said that she had “no idea” what her husband was planning and “most of the accusations against me are false”.
Turkey was in 2016 shaken by a string of attacks blamed on ISIL and Kurdish militants that left hundreds dead.
It is also engaged in a battle with ISIL to take the Syrian town of Al Bab, in the fiercest fighting yet of the Turkish military’s campaign inside Syria that started in August.
At least 48 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the incursion so far, according to the AFP, the vast majority in the battle for Al-Bab since the fight for the town began in December.
Turkey was long accused by its western allies of not doing enough to stem the flow of extremists across its borders and emergence of ISIL cells in its own cities.
Ankara denies the charges, saying it has listed ISIL as a terror group since 2013. However observers say Turkey has markedly stepped up its actions against ISIL in the last months and note that the capture of Masharipov alive may provide it with valuable intelligence.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters
