“We are not a hotel for anybody’s Islamic State members,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in televised comments to reporters in Ankara on Saturday, according to Bloomberg.
Soylu also alleged that Europe has left Turkey to deal with the prisoners alone. “That is not acceptable to us. It’s also irresponsible,” he said. “We will send the captured Daesh members to their countries,” Soylu told reporters, using another name for IS.
The Turkish Interior Minister told reporters that some countries including the Netherlands and the U.K. have stripped some captured Islamic State fighters of their citizenship to rid themselves of any responsibility on the matter. “This is unacceptable to us,” he said.
Turkey has taken some Islamic State members into custody who were being held by the Kurds in northeastern Syria after they began their military offensive targeting Kurdish forces which they had branded as “terrorists.” The offensive against the Kurds sparked worldwide concern over a possible revival of the jihadist organization.
Kurdish officials are saying that almost 800 people fled a jihadist prisoner camp after the Turkish offensive into northern Syria targeted the area. Soylu has not said exactly how many prisoners Turkey is holding, but did say they would hold the captured foreign fighters “for some time. After that, we’ll send them back to their countries,” reports Euro News.
ISIS lost nearly all of its territory in the region six months ago and tens of thousands of fighters, including some 2,000 foreign fighters, and their families are being held in detention camps scattered throughout northeast Syria.