Persecution of Yazidis by ISIL

The Turkish security forces have apprehended five individuals determined to have been providing financial support to members of the ISIL terrorist organization, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya has announced.

Turkish intelligence officers have detained an Egyptian-born terror suspect wanted by Washington who was a top explosives expert for ISIL, state media reported on May 24.

The suspect, identified as Mustafa Abdulwahab Mahmud and born in 1999, was detained with three others on the outskirts of Istanbul after fleeing Syria, the reports said.

The Ezidi community, which escaped from Iraq's Sinjar district and took refuge in Duhok province after ISIL took control of the region, is unable to return to their homes because of oppression by the PKK and the terror group's extensions in the region, Turkey's consul general in Erbil said on April 1. 

Pope Francis prayed on March 7 for "victims of war" outside a centuries-old church in Iraq's Mosul, where the ISIL group ravaged one of the world's oldest Christian communities until the jihadists' defeat three years ago.

With the latest rescue operation in the Turkish capital, the number of the Ezidis rescued from terror groups has increased to three within the last 18-month period.

According to the information obtained by Anadolu Agency, Turkish intelligence and police units conduct operations both within the country and abroad to rescue those in need.

At least six foreign nationals have been arrested for suspected links to the ISIL terror group, a security source said early on Jan. 24.

Police conducted an operation in Kastamonu's city center as part of an anti-ISIL probe launched by prosecutors in the Black Sea province, the source said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi paid a one-day official visit to Ankara on Dec.17 to discuss with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan economy and security matters, including combatting the PKK and ISIL, the re-construction of Iraq, trade and energy.

ISIL extremists are mounting increasingly bold attacks in Syria and Iraq following their loss of territory in both countries and are planning for the breakout of their fighters in detention facilities, U.N. experts said in a new report.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Oct. 19 that all of the nearly 1,000 troops withdrawing from northern Syria are expected to move to western Iraq to continue the campaign against ISIL militants and "to help defend Iraq."

The Iraqi husband of a German woman who is being tried on charges that the couple allowed a 5-year-old Yazidi girl they kept as a slave to die of thirst in the hot sun has been extradited from Greece to Germany.