A senior Daesh member was arrested Wednesday for recruiting members for the terrorist group from Europe after he was captured by police in Turkey's southern Adana province.

Syrian national Sahwan Qahwati was under Turkish intelligence surveillance after he entered Turkey March 15 to instigate and help people from European countries to join Daesh in Syria.

The detention was made while Qahwati was traveling on an intercity bus en route to Istanbul with his wife. Interrogation revealed that he was planning to travel to Europe from Istanbul.

Following 14-days of interrogation, Qahwati was brought in front of an Adana court Monday while his wife had been deported to Syria.

Police also confiscated digital materials from Qahwati, including several pictures that depict him wearing military camouflage and holding weapons believed to be taken with Daesh members in Syria, including a photo of him holding a knife to an unidentified man's throat.

Moreover, links between Qahwati and two other senior Daesh members -- Danish citizen Mahamad Laban, who was captured in Adana on Feb. 10 and Swedish citizen Mohammed Tefik Saleh -- have been established, the sources said.

Turkey had previously deported one of the Brussels terror attackers and had notified Belgian authorities. Turkey had caught one of the Brussels attackers in the southeastern Gaziantep province in July 2015 and deported him, but was released as Belgium did not establish terror links with the suspect.

''The Belgian embassy was notified on July 14, 2015 about the deportation of the attacker, who was later released in Belgium,'' President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, adding that Belgium could not find terror links with the suspect, despite Turkey's warnings.

In regards to anti-Daesh operations in Turkey in 2016, the interior minister said earlier in 2017 that 1,338 suspects - including 694 foreigners - were arrested in Turkey for having links to the terrorist Daesh group. Soylu further noted that 52,072 people from 145 countries were barred from entering the country, saying that 4,019 people from 98 countries were deported from Turkey.

In addition, a total of 339 major terror plots were prevented as a result of the seizure of 247 explosives and 61 bomb vehicles in 2016.

Ankara launched Operation Euphrates Shield inside Syria in late August of last year with Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces and recaptured several towns near its border from Daesh including Jarablus, al-Rai, Dabiq and al-Bab. The operation dealt a heavy blow to the terrorist group's dominance in Syria.