Turkey to deport 11 French IS suspects: minister
Ankara/Xinhua/UNI: Turkey will deport 11 French national Islamic State (IS) suspects to their home country next month, said Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu on Thursday.
"This week we will carry out repatriations (of IS suspects) to Belgium and Ireland on Friday and Saturday. Also, we will send 11 French national Daesh (IS) members back to France at the beginning of December," Soylu stated at a conference on migration in the province of Izmir.
"Turkey is serious about migration management, because the country is serious in fighting terrorism," he said.
Turkey held 268,000 irregular migrants in 2018, and this figure has reached between 420,000 to 430,000 in 2019, according to the minister.
Turkey has declared that it will send thousands of captured IS militants, mostly from Europe, back to their countries even if their citizenships were canceled.
Ankara started to send captured foreign IS members back to their original countries in early November. More than 15 foreign IS suspects have been so far sent back to their countries.
