Turkey’s Justice Ministry has announced that there are 498 people in Turkey’s prisons who were jailed due to their links to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and that 28 of them have been convicted on terror charges for being ISIL members.
Responding to a parliamentary question from Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Gamze Akkuş İlgezdi, the ministry revealed some statistics regarding the inmates in Turkey’s prisons.
According to data from the ministry, there are 4,704 foreign inmates in Turkey’s prisons, and 64 percent of the jailed foreigners who were convicted of terror crimes are composed of ISIL members.
ISIL has carried out a series of deadly attacks in Turkey since the summer of 2015, which claimed the lives of hundreds of people. The Turkish government is being criticized for not waging an effective war against ISIL.
The number of inmates who are foreign nationals in Turkey’s prisons has increased by 150 percent over the past eight years, data from the ministry also showed. While there were 40 foreigners in Turkey’s prisons in 2009, this figure rose to 775 in 2017.