Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya spoke with a group of journalists for what he called the “Ankara 365 Media Gathering” at the Turkish capital on Thursday. The name refers to his first year in office, which started on June 4, 2023. The media-savvy minister then rolled out one PowerPoint slide after another, demonstrating the work of his ministry against crime, from terrorism to organized crime and migrant smuggling.
The minister, a former governor of Türkiye’s most crowded city of Istanbul, has been a daily staple of news with his social media posts that announce nationwide or major operations against every type of crime on almost a daily basis.
“This is my way of doing things. We have to let people know what we are doing. You have to challenge criminal gangs. This is how the state speaks to criminals. This is nothing personal,” he told reporters about his social media presence.
Yerlikaya said security forces working under him worked every day and his ministry, the Ministry of National Defense and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) were bearing down on terrorists “wherever they breathe.” He spoke about operations against the PKK, a major threat for Türkiye, and hailed the fact that the group cannot draw more supporters. He said only 56 people joined the PKK last year, the lowest rate in the history of the group that has terrorized Türkiye since the '80s.
He stated that they carried out 31,994 operations in one year against the terrorist group and eliminated 1,022 terrorists in the same period. Among them, 49 were “high-ranking members” of the PKK. He said security forces were further strengthened with growing “local and national technology products” helping them in the operations,
He also said unmanned aerial vehicles clocked flights amounting to 46,678 hours within the year. “Terrorists are afraid of looking up now,” he said.
Regarding the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), Yerlikaya said they arrested 1,595 suspects in 5,543 operations, while 1,607 operations against Daesh ended up with arrests of 903 suspects.
The minister said security forces thwarted 160 terrorist attacks, including 119 bomb attacks in 365 days. He stated that they also worked on cutting off finances to terrorist groups.
On organized crime, Yerlikaya stated that their operations spelled the end for 585 criminal gangs in one year.
The Interior Ministry is also embattled with irregular migration as Türkiye straddles two continents and faces an influx of migrants from its eastern borders in particular. Yerlikaya said authorities stopped 194,450 irregular migrants on the borders, and 141,187 people were deported to their countries of origin. “This is the highest number since 2014,” he highlighted.
Yerlikaya said he instructed governors of 81 provinces to clamp down on migrant smugglers uninterruptedly.
“An irregular migrant who never left the city he/she was born before has the guts to come to my country some 7,000 kilometers away. This is because (smugglers) encourage them. It is our duty to crack down on this network,” he said.
He said 4,493 migrant smugglers were arrested in one year.
Yerlikaya also shared the latest data on regular migrants and refugees. He said Türkiye hosted more than 3.1 million Syrian refugees. He said more than 103,000 Syrian refugees returned home in one year and that this number has reached 658,463 in total since 2016.
