This file photo shows Turkish police arresting a suspect in the capital, Ankara. (By AFP)

Turkish police have arrested at least 27 suspected members of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in a counter-terrorism operation in Istanbul.

Media reports cited Turkish police sources as saying on Sunday that the operation targeted addresses in 15 districts of Istanbul after police learned that those arrested were ordered to carry out an attack in retaliation for social media posts with blasphemous content.

In recent years, the Daesh terrorists have carried out a series of gun and bomb attacks in Turkey.

On January 1, 2017, the terrorists attacked a nightclub in Istanbul and killed 39 people.

Back in October 2015, twin bombings targeted a pro-Kurdish peace rally in the capital, Ankara, killing 103 people and injuring more than 500. The government blamed Daesh. In another attack, the terrorist group launched a bomb attack that killed a dozen people in the city’s historic heart in 2016.

Turkey has stepped up anti-terror operations against Daesh terrorist network inside the country in recent years, arresting many suspected terrorists and busting several terror cells across the country.

Turkey has said that it would surely send captured Western members of Daesh back to their countries of origin even if those countries have stripped them of citizenship.

Extremists from across Europe joined Daesh in droves in 2014, when the Takfiri terror group launched its campaign of death and destruction in Iraq and Syria.

Back then, many European leaders ignored repeated warnings that the terrorists could return home one day and that they would be a serious security challenge across the continent.

They instead allowed their nationals to join the Takfiri terror outfit in the hope that they would help topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The terror group, which once held large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, has lost all of the urban areas it had overrun in both Arab countries, thanks to counter-terror operations carried out by the Syrian and Iraqi armies.

The Daesh remnants have conducted sporadic attacks against government troops and civilians alike in the war-torn countries.

SOURCE: PRESS TV