Police have detained 46 people for suspected links to al-Qaeda in an operation conducted in five provinces, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. The operation concentrated mainly in the central Anatolian province of Konya, where some 25 people were detained. Another 21 people had been taken into custody in raids in the western provinces of Ýstanbul, Ýzmir and Kocaeli, and in the southeastern province of Mardin. Those detained in Ýstanbul, Ýzmir, Kocaeli and Mardin were later sent to Konya for interrogation, private NTV television said. Police have carried out several operations against suspected al-Qaeda members since 2003, when homegrown Islamic militants with alleged ties to the group bombed two synagogues, a British bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, killing 58 people. Some 73 people, including two Syrians, are on trial for their alleged roles in those attacks, though police say some suspected ringleaders fled the country and others died fighting US forces in Iraq. Many of those arrested in connection with the 2003 attacks acknowledge attending militant Islamist training camps in Chechnya and Afghanistan, but deny direct ties to the al-Qaeda network.
Last Friday, a court jailed seven militants for a plot to kill US President George W. Bush during a 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul. The seven men were members of Ansar al-Islam, a radical group believed to have links to al-Qaeda. Last December, police detained a lawyer who said he was the leader of al-Qaeda in Turkey and seized bomb-making material.