 and outlawed far-left groups, officials said, before an upcoming NATO summit.){kind=link}
Turkish police on Tuesday detained more than 200 people suspected of links to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and outlawed far-left groups, officials said, before an upcoming NATO summit.
Rights groups and local media said the detainees included a journalist, three lawyers, an academic and a union official.
The top-level summit takes place in the capital of Ankara on July 7-8.
Early on Tuesday the Ankara Chief Public Posecutor’s Office said it had issued warrants for 241 people, with counterterrorism police detaining 209 people in early morning raids in the city.
Of those detained so far, 185 are suspected of belonging to several far-left organizations, including the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), which has staged attacks in the past and has been branded as a terrorist group by Ankara.
The detainees also included Yıldız Tar, editor-in-chief of LGBTQ journal Kaos GL, the MLSA rights group said on X, while the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD) said two of its lawyers were detained in Ankara and a third in İstanbul.
The Gazete Oksijen newspaper said an academic from Ankara University’s economics department and a union official were also detained.
Erol Önderoğlu of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounced Tar’s arrest as “unacceptable” and demanded his release, saying the summit was no justification for his “arbitrary” detention on security grounds.
Authorities said the operations targeted multiple groups as part of broader security measures.
In a post late on Monday the Ankara Governor’s Office announced a ban on all demonstrations from June 28 until the end of the summit in order “to ensure summit security and maintain public order.”
The summit is expected to bring together leaders from the military alliance’s 32 member states.
© Agence France-Presse