Turkey detains ISIS suspect believed planning to attack ANZAC service
Turkish authorities have arrested a suspected ISIS member
they believe was planning to attack a World War One commemoration at Gallipoli
attended by hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders, police said on
Wednesday, according to Reuters.
The suspect, a Syrian national, was detained in Tekirdag, a
northwestern province close to the Gallipoli peninsula, a Tekirdag police
spokesman said.
Every year, Australians and New Zealanders travel to Turkey
for memorial services commemorating the failed 1915 military campaign by ANZAC
and allied forces to drive Ottoman troops from Gallipoli and the Dardanelles
region.
On Wednesday, soldiers from New Zealand, Australia, Turkey
and other countries held several services on the peninsula. At dawn on
Thursday, Australians and New Zealanders are due to hold a special dawn service
marking the landings by ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) forces.
Demiroren news agency said the man was preparing for an
attack on the commemorations in retaliation for the attacks on Muslims in
mosques in New Zealand.
The police spokesman did not specify which day the detained
suspect may have been planning to carry out an attack.
Turkey has said ISIS was responsible for several bombings
that took place in 2015 and 2016, which in total killed some 200 people.
Although the militant group has not been active in Turkey of late, authorities
still carry out routine operations against suspected ISIS members.
This year’s ANZAC service takes place a month after Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced criticism from Australia and New Zealand
for comments he made after a lone gunman killed 50 people in two mosques in the
city of Christchurch on March 15.
Erdogan played a video from the shootings at local election
rallies and said the gunman had targeted Turkey by saying in a manifesto posted
online that Turks should be removed from the European half of Istanbul.
He also threatened to send back in coffins anyone who tried
to take the battle to Istanbul.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white
supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder for New Zealand’s worst
peacetime mass shooting. Fifty other people were injured in the attacks, which
occurred during Friday prayers.