The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Turkish capital Ankara has issued arrest warrants to bring into custody a total of 49 suspects linked to the terrorist groups Daesh and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in two separate investigations.
Authorities identified the addresses of 16 FETÖ suspects in Ankara and detained 11 of them in an operation, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement Tuesday.
Since December 2013, when the terrorist group emerged as the perpetrator of two coup attempts disguised as graft probes, FETÖ has been regarded as a security threat. Prosecutors say that the group's infiltrators in law enforcement, the judiciary, bureaucracy and the military had waged a long-running campaign to topple the government.
The group is also implicated in a string of cases related to its alleged plots to imprison its critics, money laundering, fraud and forgery.
FETÖ has been under more intense scrutiny since the July 15, 2016 coup attempt its infiltrators in the army carried out, which left 251 people dead and thousands more injured. Tens of thousands of people were detained, arrested or dismissed from public sector jobs following the attempt under a state of emergency.
The prosecution in Ankara also wants 33 Daesh suspects on charges of “opposition to the law on the prevention of financing of terrorism” and “being a member of an armed terrorist organization” in eight provinces.
Investigations have found that the suspects were procuring funds on behalf of Daesh to both finance terrorist activity and help the families of its members killed in combat.
Terrorists from Daesh, FETÖ and other groups, such as the PKK and its Syrian wing, the YPG, rely on a network of members and supporters in Türkiye. In response, Ankara has been intensifying its crackdown on the terrorists and their links at home, conducting pinpoint operations and freezing assets to eliminate the terrorist groups by their roots.
In the first 11 months of 2023, Turkish security forces arrested some 163 suspects wanted for helping fund terrorists and seized over TL 28 million raised, the Interior Ministry revealed last week.
Operations also targeted illegal betting and virtual gambling platforms, which provide significant funds to terrorists, and arrested over 1,660 suspects, while the Cybercrime Department found 19,948 accounts linked to terrorism. Some 190 suspects were detained in ensuing operations.
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 attacks. In response, Türkiye launched counterterrorism operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.
