It has been seven years since the Daesh terrorist group killed 100 civilians in front of the Ankara Train Station (Ankara Garı), while Türkiye was shaken by the bloodiest terrorist attack in its history.
According to the information compiled by Anadolu Agency (AA), in 2015, when many important developments took place in the country's political history, terrorist organizations PKK and Daesh carried out attacks targeting civilians.
On July 20, 2015, 34 people were killed in a "live bomb" attack on a group that was making a press statement in the garden of southeastern Şanlıurfa's Suruç Municipality Cultural Center.
After this attack, the terrorist organization Daesh revealed its bloody face and targeted civilians again, this time at Ankara Train Station, on Oct. 10, 2015.
In the attack that targeted various groups who gathered in front of the train station for a political demonstration under the name of "Labor, Peace, Democracy Meeting" and carried out by two suicide bombers, 100 people, including two children, lost their lives and 391 were injured.
Three days of national mourning was declared for those who lost their lives, the union and professional chambers that organized the rally decided to strike.
Having received the information that the rally would be held, the terrorist organization Daesh sent Yunus Emre Alagöz and a Syrian terrorist, whose identity could not be determined, from Gaziantep to Ankara for the attack.
When the clock showed 10:04 a.m., Alagöz pulled the pin of the bomb on him. Three seconds after the explosion, the second suicide bomber carried out the same action. In the heinous attack, 100 people, including two children, lost their lives and 391 people, including 20 children, were injured.
The indictment of the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office regarding the attack was accepted by the Ankara 4th High Criminal Court on July 13, 2016. The first hearing was held on Nov. 7, 2016, and the case was decided on Aug. 3, 2018. In this process, the court, which saw 55 hearings, received statements from 545 complainants and 26 witnesses.
The court sentenced nine suspects to aggravated life imprisonment, one each for "destroying the unity and integrity of the state" and 100 times for "deliberately killing 100 people," a total of 101 times each. The court also sentenced the defendants to 10,557 years in prison for attempting to kill 391 people, 20 of whom were children, and sentenced some of them to prison and judicial fines for other crimes.
After a meteoric rise in 2014 in Iraq and Syria that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory, Daesh saw its self-proclaimed "caliphate" collapse under a wave of offensives. It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but sleeper cells of the extremist group still carry out attacks in both countries.
Türkiye ranks first among the countries that have faced the most attacks at the hands of Daesh. The organization has carried out terrorist attacks against Türkiye both inside and outside the country.
In 2013, Türkiye became one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group. The country has since been attacked by the terrorist group multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks and four armed assaults.
In response, Türkiye launched counterterrorism operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.
