ISTANBUL, Sept 24 (NNN-ANADOLU) – Turkey has been “successfully” continuing its fight against the Daesh, which targeted the country with a series of deadly terror attacks since 2015, “amid high potential threat,” a security expert said, yesterday.
“At present, threat of radicalism conceptually exists in this geography,” Abdullah Agar, a specialist and writer of books on Turkey’s fight against terror organisations, said.
“In this sense, Turkey could probably face the Daesh menace again on its soil,” he noted, adding that, signs of the threat have become apparent in several latest incidents, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ISIS-K, a local affiliate of the Daesh in Afghanistan, launched a bloody attack on Kabul airport at the end of Aug, leaving more than 180 dead. At another siege, in Iraq’s province of Kirkuk, in earlier Sept, at least 13 security members were killed.
The Daesh conducted numerous attacks across Turkey since 2015, including on a nightclub in Istanbul, on New Year’s Eve of 2017, killing 39 people. Turkey’s counter-terrorism units in response conduct operations against the group in the country.
Agar stressed, the Daesh declared “Turkey as one of its provinces” and the group continues to impose a significant threat, having many cell structures across the country.
“We also see that they (the militants), keep trying to infiltrate Turkey, especially from neighbouring Syria,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Turkish anti-terror teams detained 14 suspected Daesh members, in operations conducted in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, and the southern province of Adana, earlier yesterday.
The Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued detention warrants for the suspects, with alleged links to the Yamacli group, a Salafi group operating under the Daesh structure in Turkey.
Turkish authorities recently determined that the Daesh has been exerting efforts to make the Yamacli group, which had been dissolved by the intense raids of the Turkish security forces, operational again.
“We can say that Turkey successfully continues its struggle against the Daesh, to eliminate the threat… and many of its militants are getting caught, thanks to the Turkish security forces’ frequent operations,” Agar noted.– NNN-ANADOLU
