Turkish president backs anti-terror operations

This coupled with the fact that the government is prosecuting police officers and legal officials who stopped weapons shipments for Syria from within Turkey conducted by members of the Turkish intelligence agency MiT has led many to claim that the Turkish government has been tacitly supporting ISIS and other radical Islamist groups.

It has emerged that one of the women in the viral image, Çağla Seven, 27, sustained serious injuries but survived the bombing that claimed the life of her friend, lying beside her.

This comes as Turkey is one of the main supporters of Takfiri militancy against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with reports showing that Ankara actively trains and arms the militants operating in Syria, and also facilitates the safe passage of foreign terrorists into the country, which has been gripped by crisis since 2011.

This sparked an upsurge in violence in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, where many accuse the Turkish authorities of collaborating with IS, accusations Ankara denies.

The police raid in Sanliurfa, a southeastern province of Turkey, saw 35 people linked with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group held.

The fighting erupted after the killing of 32 people in a suicide bombing Monday in a Turkish town on the Syrian border that the government blamed on IS.

In a unanimous statement, the 15-member council “underlined the need to bring perpetrators of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice”. The number arrested was not immediately clear.

The suspects, all males, were detained in the province’s Ceylanpinar district.

The Dogan news agency said that 140 addresses were raided in 26 districts in Istanbul, in an operation involving some 5,000 police.

On Thursday, another policeman was killed in the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.

Speaking to reporters in Istanbul on Friday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: “Those who stand behind terror organizations will pay the price”.