The ministry said that the security forces arrested “16 suspects of belonging to ISIS in a security operation targeting the financial resources of the organization in 6 Turkish provinces.”
Turkish security arrested five people suspected of belonging to ISIS in the city of Ankara on Tuesday morning.
A security source said that the arrest of the suspects was carried out as part of the operation launched a few days ago, with the aim of reaching suspects before the New Year.
On Saturday, the Turkish authorities arrested nine foreigners during a security operation against ISIS in Istanbul, the country’s largest city.
The Turkish Anadolu Agency quoted a security source as saying that the anti-terror teams of the Istanbul Security Directorate launched a security operation to arrest suspects suspected of carrying out activities or planning operations for the terrorist organization.
On December 20, a Turkish security source announced the arrest of 12 people suspected of belonging to the terrorist organization ISIS, during a security operation in Ankara.
The arrests came while the terrorist organization ISIS had carried out several bloody attacks in Turkey during the past decade, taking advantage of its presence in neighboring Syria.
ISIS attacks in Turkey resulted in a large number of casualties, and severely affected the tourism movement in the country, but the organization’s strength later declined as a result of the international coalition campaign.
In 2016, Turkey joined the international coalition against the terrorist organization led by the United States to eliminate ISIS.
In August 2016, Turkey announced the implementation of the “Euphrates Shield” military operation, in northern Syria, in cooperation with military factions, in order to pursue the terrorist organization, and then confirmed the success of the operation months later, and that was in March 2017.
The terrorist organization fell to the ground in Syria and Iraq, and lost its major strongholds from which it declared its alleged “caliphate”, but a number of those loyal to ISIS are still moving on a small scale.
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