The Turkish Interior Ministry spokesman Ismail Catakli told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency that a Danish and a German national would also be repatriated later on Monday, while seven more German nationals would be returned on November 14, reports PBS.
While Germany has responded by saying they would not refuse entry to their own citizens, the United States and Denmark did not immediately comment.
The move comes after Turkey announced on November 2, it would send foreign Islamic State fighters captured in Syria back to their countries of origin, despite the unwillingness of many European states to take them in. “We are not a hotel for anybody’s Islamic State members,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in televised comments to reporters in Ankara.
As CTV News Canada notes, Turkey has been deporting IS sympathizers to their home countries for years. But after Western nations refused to back its invasion of northeastern Syria and its offensive against Syrian Kurdish fighters – whom they consider to be terrorists – Turkey has become more forceful.
Turkey claims it has captured 287 militants in northeast Syria and already holds hundreds more Islamic State suspects. It has accused European countries of dragging their feet in taking back their citizens who had chosen to fight for the Islamic state.
According to Reuters, there are 23 others to be deported in the coming days – all European – including a Dane expected to be sent abroad later on Monday, as well as two Irish nationals, nine other Germans and 11 French citizens.
“Efforts to identify the nationalities of foreign fighters captured in Syria have been completed, with their interrogations, 90 percent finished and the relevant countries notified,” Catakli said, according to state-owned Anadolu news agency.
It appears that not all countries are on the same page over accepting terrorists back into their countries. A Dutch court in The Hague ruled on Monday the Netherlands must help repatriate children of women who joined the Jihadist fighters, “but the mothers do not need to be accepted back.”
