Arrest of Several 'ISIS Members' Ahead of Turkish Elections

A state news agency in Turkey reported the arrest of '14 members of the ISIS group' in Ankara, the capital of the country, just before the elections on Sunday. Reuters, citing the Anadolu Agency on Friday, July 1, reported that these individuals were 'preparing to carry out an attack in Ankara.' The Anadolu Agency's report did not mention the identities of the 'suspected' ISIS members, only stating that they were all 'non-Turkish.' The report of the arrests comes just two days before elections that are set to grant special and comprehensive powers to the presidency of the country. On Sunday, July 3, parliamentary elections in Turkey will also take place. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced in late April that the presidential and parliamentary elections would be held a year earlier than scheduled on June 24, corresponding to July 3. Erdoğan believes that Turkey must quickly transition to a system where executive powers are concentrated in the hands of the president. The Turkish anti-terrorism police transferred 14 suspects 'for interrogation to police headquarters' during several simultaneous operations in various parts of Ankara on Friday. Turkey has repeatedly been the target of terrorist attacks, including by the ISIS group, especially in the past two years since it began its operations against ISIS in Syrian territory, and thus such anti-terror operations are conducted 'regularly' in Turkey. One of these operations was carried out by ISIS members and resulted in dozens of deaths in January 2017 at a nightclub. On January 1, 2017, an ISIS member attacked a nightclub in Istanbul, leaving 39 dead, and two days later, the group officially claimed responsibility for the attack. In 2016, an attack by this group in downtown Istanbul resulted in 12 deaths.