The Turkish interior ministry and MIT intelligence service have made public a series of high-profile raids that took place in rapid succession in recent weeks.
The Turkish interior ministry and MIT intelligence service announced the apprehension of over 200 individuals allegedly linked to jihadists from the Islamic State group, in two separate rounds of raids.
Turkey announced on Wednesday that it had detained 56 high-priority suspects, wanted by 18 countries for offenses spanning from drug dealing and money laundering to murder, counterfeiting, and assault.
Ali Yerlikaya, the Interior Minister, clarified that the suspects were highlighted on Interpol’s “red notice” using “diffusion message” systems, indicating their status as targets for arrest and extradition by individual countries.
The detained people were wanted in the United States, Germany, India, and several former Soviet republics as well as other parts of Asia and the Middle East.
Yerlikaya’s office did not disclose names, noting only that the suspects were rounded up in coordinated security sweeps across 11 provinces, including Istanbul.
The authorities declared on Tuesday that 34 individuals, charged with spying for Israel, had been detained.
Acknowledged as a close and ambitious political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Yerlikaya has been consistently announcing significant arrests since taking office last year.
He has excluded himself from the mayoral race in Istanbul for the pivotal March 31 elections, expressing a preference to continue serving as the interior minister.
In the March polls, Erdogan’s Islamic conservative party aspires to reclaim control of Turkey’s three major cities—Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir—fromt he secular opposition.