Turkish police have detained 14 people suspected of financing the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after a tip from the German Embassy in Ankara about an alleged fundraising network supporting detained militants in Syria, the DHA news agency reported on Tuesday.
The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said the embassy had alerted Turkish counterterrorism police to coordinated fundraising in German-speaking countries. The money was allegedly intended to support ISIL members held in camps in northern Syria or pay to secure their release.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the network used Telegram channels generally coordinated from Syria. Turkish nationals living in Germany, along with Turkish and foreign nationals in Turkey, allegedly collected donations and transferred the money to Syria.
Prosecutors described the camps as controlled by Kurdish groups that Turkey regards as terrorist organizations linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Police identified 16 suspects, including two Syrian nationals and one Uzbek national. Prosecutors said financial and communications analysis identified suspicious transactions involving the suspects.
Police carried out simultaneous raids in Ankara and other provinces, detaining 14 of the 16 suspects.
All 16 are under investigation on suspicion of belonging to an armed terrorist organization and financing terrorism, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Similar fundraising networks aimed at supporting ISIL members held in camps in northeastern Syria have previously been the subject of criminal proceedings in Germany.
According to a 2024 report by Deutsche Welle Turkish, five defendants went on trial in Düsseldorf that year over allegations that they had sent more than €250,000 to ISIL between 2020 and 2022.
Prosecutors alleged that the money flowed into a network that helped pay for the release of ISIL members from the al-Hol and Roj camps or supported their lives there in accordance with the group’s ideology.
The report also described a fundraising initiative that said it had been established in Ankara in May 2018.
The Turkish prosecutors’ statement did not identify a connection between Tuesday’s operation and that German case.
Turkey, which designated ISIL as a terrorist organization in 2013 and shares a long border with Syria, has since suffered a series of deadly attacks attributed to or claimed by the group.
Among the deadliest were twin suicide bombings targeting a peace rally outside Ankara’s main train station in October 2015 that killed 103 people. The group claimed responsibility for an attack on İstanbul’s Reina nightclub during New Year’s celebrations on January 1, 2017, in which 39 people were killed.
More recently, two gunmen affiliated with ISIL’s Khorasan Province attacked the Santa Maria Italian Catholic Church in İstanbul during Sunday Mass in January 2024, killing one person.
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