After staging a series of nationwide raids, Turkish security forces arrested 20 suspects tied to the ISIS group and who were suspected of plotting terror attacks.
“A total of 18 people planning [terror] acts have been caught in various provinces with their arms,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said, speaking at an opening ceremony in Istanbul's Tuzla district.
Soylu added that two other alleged terror act plotters who were caught were believed to have been getting ready to carry out imminent attacks.
"We also revealed where and how they had been planning [a terror act], and we also detected how close they had been," Soylu said.
Lately, Turkey has scaled up its security operations nationwide, raising the level of alertness for potential terror attacks.
On Friday, for example, anti-terrorist forces detained four ISIS members in the southern state of Adana, after obtaining an arrest warrant. Backed by armored vehicles, security swat teams carried out a raid in the early on Friday, arresting the operatives whilst in possession of illegal arms and communication devices.
Similarly, another 10 terror suspects were nabbed last week for sharing ties with terror group ISIS in the central Kayseri Province.
Over the past few years, Turkey has been the target of multiple terror bombings and witnessed armed attacks hitting big cities like Ankara and Istanbul.
ISIS has adopted the largest number of these assaults and has claimed hundreds of lives and injuries.
Since early 2017, Turkish security forces have arrested more than 4,000 terrorists, most of who were foreigners. Hundreds were deported abroad.
Turkish security forces successfully foiled 347 terrorist operations in 2018, which is nearly half of those thwarted in 2017.
