In January, police detained more than 120 al-Qaida suspects in raids mostly in east and central Anatolia. Then last week, police arrested maths student Abdulkadir Kucuk from a university in the western city of Izmir who was in contact with a Turkish militant described as the head of al-Qaida's Aegean cell and who is now fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
| Mr. Kucuk was trained in bomb-making and writing computer programs to jam drone flight signals. |
In a follow up operation this week police in Istanbul rounded up a dozen more.
A senior Turkish security official told Reuters that all the Turks who have joined al-Qaida's ranks in Afghanistan-Pakistan belong to one group. He went on to name its chief as well as a commander, Zekeriya, whom Kucuk was caught e-mailing. "Their leader is named Ebuzer, the leader of all Turks in al-Qaida. Zekeriya is another high-ranking leader of Turks there," he said.
The Washington-based Jamestown Foundation identifies Ebuzer as Serdar Erbashi, a veteran of the second Chechen war, who had headed al-Qaida's cell in Ankara.
| Apparently the Turkish group is called Taifatul Mansura, a phrase from the Koran translated as "Assembly of the Victorious". They have been reduced by drone missiles and splitters, came from Ittehad-e-Islami (Islamic Jihad Union), which came from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, connected to Al Qaeda. |
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