Far-right leader Devlet Bahçeli, a key ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) “a stooge of Zionist-imperialist forces” after a predawn police raid on an ISIL cell in northwestern Turkey on Monday turned into a gun battle that killed three officers and six militants.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said police stormed a house on the road to the village of Elmalık in Yalova province, south of İstanbul on the Sea of Marmara, and came under fire. Eight police officers and a neighborhood watchman employed by the Turkish police were wounded, he said.
Yerlikaya said five women and six children inside the house were safely evacuated and that all six militants killed were Turkish citizens. He said raids were carried out at more than 100 locations across 15 provinces as part of a nationwide crackdown.
The Yalova operation lasted nearly eight hours, with special forces sent from nearby Bursa, according to news agency reports and officials. Local authorities closed five schools in the area and cut electricity and natural gas while police sealed off access roads, the reports said.
Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said the Yalova Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened an investigation and assigned five prosecutors, adding that five people were taken into custody.
Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has backed Erdoğan in parliament for years, described ISIL as a “pawn” and portrayed the clash as a staged provocation against what the government calls a “terrorism-free Turkey” campaign, which refers to renewed efforts to achieve peace with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In his statement Bahçeli also used language that tied the incident to foreign plots, writing that no attack, assassination or sabotage would deter Turkey from its path and asserting that ISIL had been “set loose” on Turkey by an unnamed “front of hostility.”
Erdoğan offered condolences for the dead officers and said Turkey would keep fighting extremist threats “inside and outside” its borders.
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Özgür Özel issued a message of condolence for the three police officers and wished the wounded a speedy recovery.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Co-chair Tuncer Bakırhan also conveyed condolences and called ISIL “a serious threat” for the region and “all humanity,” urging a shared national stance against ISIL and similar groups.
İYİ (Good) Party leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu used the incident to criticize the government’s “terrorism-free Turkey” initiative in remarks posted on social media.
Future Party leader Ahmet Davutoğlu linked the Yalova clash to a wider regional turmoil, arguing that ISIL’s renewed activity in Turkey during rising Syria tensions and “Israel-focused interventions” in the region “cannot be a coincidence,” while calling for the group to be dismantled.
Ultranationalist politician Ümit Özdağ, leader of the Victory Party, said the clash showed the cost of Turkey’s Syria policy and repeated his warnings about ISIL networks and security risks ahead of New Year’s crowds.
The Yalova operation came days after Turkish authorities detained 115 ISIL suspects in coordinated raids based on warrants for 137 people, accusing them of planning attacks targeting Christmas and New Year’s events, according to officials and the state-run Anadolu news agency.
Turkey shares a long border with Syria and has faced repeated ISIL attacks over the past decade, including a January 1, 2017, nightclub shooting in İstanbul during New Year’s celebrations that killed 39 people, according to officials and past reporting.