Turkish police detain 16 suspects over links to ISIS

Turkish security forces on Tuesday detained 16 foreign nationals for their suspected links to the Islamic State (ISIS) in the country's financial and cultural hub Istanbul.

The Istanbul police units have launched simultaneous operations against the suspected foreign members of the IS and raided 18 addresses across the city, the CNN Turk Broadcaster said.

The suspects were reportedly recruiting personnel in Istanbul, conducting propaganda through social media platforms, seeking logistic support for the group.

Numerous digital materials were also seized during the searches made at the addresses, CNN Turk noted, adding that the nationalities of those detained in operations were not immediately clear.

Abdullah Agar, a security expert, said that ISIS, which has targeted the country with a series of deadly terror attacks since 2015, has been posing a "high potential threat" for Turkey.

"At present, the threat of radicalism conceptually exists in this geography," Agar, also a writer of a series of books on Turkey's fight against terror organisations, told Xinhua in a recent interview. (ANI/Xinhua)

( With inputs from ANI )

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