More than 100 detained in counterterrorism operations

The raids started in the province of Gaziantep, with simultaneous operations in Adana, Adıyaman, Kahramanmaraş, Şanlıurfa, Hatay and Osmaniye. In Gaziantep 16 people were detained, including a man named Şahmerdan S., who officials said may be the leader of Vasat, which has relations with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Eight people were detained in Adana, while four were detained in Osmaniye, one in Hatay, eight in Kahramanmaraş, 12 in Adıyaman and 13 in Şanlıurfa. Sources said the organization, which began operating in the 1990s, had previously been targeted by security forces, but that the group had recently received more recruits and was ready to stage new terrorist attacks. The group also has a magazine called Vasat.

On Sept. 14, 1997 the organization detonated a bomb at a book fair in the Gaziantep Fair Arena at a stall where copies of the Bible were sold, wounding 24 people and killing a 4-year-old child. Seventeen people were arrested in relation to that attack, including Muhittin Eryılmaz, who had protested Turkish military's operations in northern Iraq against the PKK. He had joined members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in protesting the operation while holding a Quran in his hand.

In 2008 Eryılmaz, a retired imam, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison by a Diyarbakır court for engaging in propaganda activity for the PKK.

Meanwhile, in a police operation in Konya, 13 people were detained on suspicion of links to the Anatolian Federative Islamic State/Union of Islamic Communities (AFİD/İCCB).

In operations in Elazığ and Malatya, 20 people were detained in relation to the Turkish Hizbullah, a Kurdish, Sunni fundamentalist organization that appeared in the late 1980s in southeastern Turkey with no relation to the Lebanon-based Hezbullah. Yesterday's operation was against Hizbullah's "İlim" association, based in Elazığ. Police conducted raids on houses, bookstores and associations linked to İlim.