Turkish authorities arrested 22 Islamic State terror suspects in central Yozgat province

Turkish police arrested 22 people on Saturday accused of being members of Islamic State (ISIS), state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

The detained were Iraqi nationals and had entered Turkey illegally and reportedly acted on behalf of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, it said.

Turkey was one of the principal routes for foreign fighters trying to join ISIS at the height of the group’s self-declared “caliphate” and it was hit by a wave of attacks blamed on ISIS and Kurdish militants in 2015 and 2016, which claimed the lives of around 300 people.

There are an estimated 10,000 ISIS fighters in camps and prisons run by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) across northeastern Syria.

Ankara considers the SDF, spearheaded by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has been at war in Turkey for over three decades, and has launched offensives against the group.

Source: Ahval News