Wide-scale antiterrorist actions held in Istanbul

YEREVAN, JULY 24, ARMENPRESS: Thousands of police officers have launched raids to arrest suspected members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) following a wave of deadly violence in Turkey.

Armenpress reports, citing the Hürriyet Daily that backed up by helicopters, police raided addresses in several Istanbul districts in search of members of ISIL at dawn on July 24, thePKKand other militant groups, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. It added that a female member of theoutlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) was killed in the Bağcılar district in a gunfight.

In the western provinces of İzmir and Bursa, a total of 16 suspected militants of thePKKwere arrested in the initial operation, according to private Doğan News Agency. The agency also said that some 5,000 police officers joined the raids in 140 addresses in Istanbul.The total number of arrests was not immediately clear.

The raids came after 32 people were killed in a suicide bombing Monday in a Turkish town on the Syrian border, blamed on ISIL.

This sparked an upsurge in violence in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, where many accuse the Turkish authorities of collaborating with ISIL, accusationsAnkara denies.

Two police were shot dead in southeast Turkey close to the Syrian border on July 22, in an attack claimed by the PKK’s military wing which said it wanted to avenge the Suruç bombing.

On July 23, another policeman was killed in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir.

Meanwhile, the PKK’s youth wing Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H)claimed it had shot dead an alleged former ISIL fighter in Istanbul late July 21.

The July 24 police raids targeted the YDG-H, too, according to Doğan News Agency.