2013 May 11: Potential IS attack On 11 May 2013, two
car bombs exploded in the town of
Reyhanlı,
Hatay Province,
Turkey, close to the busiest land border post (
Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing) with
Syria. 51 people were killed and 140 injured in the attack, the deadliest single act of terrorism to occur on Turkish soil up until then—to be surpassed by the 10 October
2015 Ankara bombings with 102 mm. Who is responsible for the attack is, as of yet, unclear: politicians, authorities, media, suspects have named at least six possibilities. The Islamic State, during late September 2013, suddenly claimed the 11 May 2013 attack. In response to the attacks and claim, the Turkish government sent air and ground forces to increase the already heavy military presence in the area.
2014 January 28: Turkish attack on IS convoy On 28 January 2014, the Turkish air force, according to few sources, performed an airstrike on Syrian territory hitting a pickup, a truck and a bus in an Islamic State convoy, killing 11 militants and
emir Abu Ja'afar ad-Daghistani.
March 20: IS attack on Turkish security officials On 20 March, three Islamic State militants emerging from a taxi opened fire with an
AK-47 (some reports say
Glock automatics) and lobbed a hand grenade, killing a
Gendarmerie soldier and a policeman who were conducting routine checks on the
Ulukışla–
Adana expressway, and injuring four Gendarmerie. The attackers were wounded in return fire but got away. Two of the attackers were apprehended at Eminlik village, where villagers, thinking they were wounded Syrian civilian refugees, took them to the local medical clinic. Benyamin Xu (German), Çendrim Ramadani (Swiss) and Muhammed Zakiri (Macedonian) were all sentenced to life in prison for the attack.
June 11: IS kidnaps 49 Turks In June 2014, Turkey officially designated the Islamic State and the
al-Nusra Front as terrorist organizations. Also on 11 June 2014, the Islamic State captured the Turkish consulate in Mosul and held all of its 49 workers as hostages. This happened during the
June 2014 takeover of Mosul. The hostages were freed in mid-September 2014 after Turkish authorities had paid the
ransom and swapped the hostages for 180 Islamic State militants who had been apprehended after being illegally in Turkey for medical treatment. Turkey had denied paying the ransom.
September 5: Turkey enters US-led coalition On 5 September 2014, Turkey entered a US-led coalition,
CJTF–OIR vowing to 'join forces to fight ISIL'.
November 22: Turkish training of Peshmerga During early November 2014, in a move that surprised many, Turkish soldiers began training
Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. A Turkish official referred to it 'as part of the [shared] struggle against ISIL'.
2015 January 6: Istanbul attack On 6 January 2015, a bomb is detonated in Istanbul's
Sultanahmet Square. One police officer got killed while another officer was injured. According to journalist Serkan Demirtas, this attack might have been the attack in which Turkey considered a "declaration of war" from the Islamic State and began taking them much more seriously afterwards.
July 23: Turkish air bases for US to use against IS On 22–23 July, the U.S. reached an agreement with Turkey for American warplanes striking the Islamic State in
Syria to be stored in the Turkish air bases at
İncirlik in
Adana Province and
Diyarbakır in
Diyarbakır Province. US Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, on 24 July thanked Turkey for its permission to use the Turkish air bases: "It provides additional flexibility and agility in addressing this enemy ISIL (...) It also means that Turkey has taken another step forward in being more committed to helping us."
July 23: Elbeyli incident On 23 July 2015 at 13:30
local time, five gunmen, identified by the Turkish military as being Islamic State militants, attacked a Turkish border outpost in the border town of
Elbeyli,
Kilis Province, killing one Turkish soldier (Yalçın Nane) and wounding five. and Turkish tanks and artillery shelled Islamic State strongholds in northern Syria, killing at least one militant and obliterating a number of vehicles. Turkish tanks also bombarded a small (abandoned The
Turkish Armed Forces later stated that all five militants who had attacked the Turkish army in Elbeyli had been killed.
July 24: 'Turkish–American zone in northern Syria' On 24 July 2015, the Turkish, English-language newspaper/website
Hürriyet Daily News, referring to anonymous "Turkish sources", reported that the deal, made public by the
United States the previous day, in which Turkey gave permission to the US to use Turkish air bases, came with the US agreeing to let Turkey set up a "partial no-fly zone" in Northern
Syria of 90 km wide, between Syria's
Mare' and
Jarabulus, 40 to 50 km deep. Neither Turkey nor the US has officially confirmed the deal on the Turkish buffer zone – a no-fly zone protected by Turkish and CJTF–OIR forces – which would provide a safe haven for refugees and deny the
SDF access to crucial territory. In the no-fly zone,
SAA jets will not be permitted,
Hürriyet stated. Their story now ran as that Turkey and the US had agreed on an "ISIL-free zone" in northern Syria, 98 kilometers long between
Mare' and
Jarabulus and 40 km deep, an area at that moment largely under Islamic State control, from which the US and Turkey planned to eliminate all "jihadist terrorists".
July 25: Anti-IS police raids in Turkey On 25 July, Turkey engaged in
police raids in 22 provinces in Turkey targeting suspected members of the Islamic State, the
PKK, the
DHKP/C and PKK's youth wing YGD/H. 590 suspects from all of the groups targeted had been arrested by 25 July. The arrests included one Islamic State member who was allegedly in the middle of planning a suicide bombing in
Konya.
October 10: Ankara bombings The 10 October
2015 Ankara bombings cost the lives of 107 people,
2016 Calls for Jihad In the 4th issue of the Islamic State's
Rumiyah, the Islamic State referred to
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and
Necmettin Erbakan (one of Turkey's most famous Islamists) as ‘
tawaghit’ and called their supporters ‘
kuffar’ and called for people to ‘ask Allah for help and attack Turkey’ as well as to ‘stab those who support
AK Party’.
January 8: IS attacks Turkish Bashiqa camp Turkish forces at Iraq's
Bashiqa camp killed 17 Islamic State militants when the group attacked the camp with rocket fire and
assault rifles. This was the third attack by the Islamic State on the Turkish base. In the camp, Turkey had been training an armed group of Sunni locals to fight the Islamic State.
January 12: First 2016 Istanbul bombing and retaliation On January 12, 2016, an Islamic State suicide bomber committed the
2016 Istanbul bombing in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet Square, killing 12 people. All of the victims killed were foreign citizens (11 Germans, 1 Peruvian). In response to the bombing, the Turkish Army commenced tank and artillery strikes on Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq. Turkish authorities estimate that these 48 hours of shelling killed nearly 200 Islamic State militants.
March 19: Second 2016 Istanbul bombing On March 19, a
second Islamic State suicide bombing took place in
Istanbul's
Beyoğlu district. The attack killed four and wounded 36 people. On March 22, the
Turkish interior minister said that the bomber had links with the Islamic State.
March 20: Postponement of the Istanbul derby On March 20, the
Galatasaray–
Fenerbahçe derby game was postponed due to fears of a suspected Islamic State plot to attack the stadium similar to the
attack in Paris in November of the previous year.
Islamic State fire rockets at Turkish border and Turkey's response On April 22, three people were killed and six others were wounded when Islamic State rocket projectiles hit the border province of Kilis. On April 24, two rockets fired from Islamic State territory hit Kilis. 16 people were wounded, six of whom were Syrian citizens. Also, the same day the CJTF–OIR hit the Islamic State in northern Syria, located directly across from the southeastern province of Kilis. On April 26, according to the Turkish army, two missile launchers belonging to the Islamic State were destroyed in an artillery strike which also killed 11 Islamic State militants. This was the second such initiative by the Turkish Army in the past two days. On April 27, according to Turkish sources, 13 Islamic State militants were killed when Turkish artillery units shelled a building in the Duwaibik region to the north of Aleppo. The building used by Islamic State militants collapsed, killing 13 militants inside and injuring another seven. Around 150
Katyusha rocket projectiles stored on the ground floor of the building were also destroyed. The same day Turkish artillery units also shelled two missile launchers and killed 11 Islamic State militants. On April 28, five mortar shells targeting a border military post in the Karkamış district of the
Gaziantep Province were fired by the Islamic State. 11 Islamic State militants were killed in Turkish artillery shellings following the attack according to Turkish sources. On April 29, two rocket projectiles fired by the Islamic State hit the border province of Kilis in Turkey.
December 23: Execution of two soldiers On December 23, the Islamic State released a video which went viral, showing two captured Turkish soldiers, Fethi Şahin and Sefter Taş, being burned alive. The video caused an uproar in Turkey.
2017 January 1: New Year's Eve nightclub attack On January 1, a gunman entered a nightclub in Istanbul and killed 39 people.
February: large-scale arrest On 6 February, about 820 Islamic State suspects, most of them foreign nationals in Turkey illegally, were arrested in at least 29 provinces, including capital Ankara and southeastern provinces during the past week, reported by
Anadolu Agency.
2019 On November 4, 2019, Turkish communications director Fahrettin Altun stated that Rasmiya Awad, Baghdadi's lesser-known older sister, had been captured. According to
Reuters, citing Turkish officials, Awad was captured in a raid on a
shipping container in the Turkish-controlled Syrian town of
Azaz and that Turkish authorities were interrogating her husband and her daughter-in-law who they also detained. When captured, she was also accompanied by five children. "We hope to gather a trove of intelligence from Baghdadi's sister on the inner workings of ISIS," Altun stated. Little information is available on Baghdadi's sister and Reuters was not immediately able to verify if the captured individual was her.
2021 In 2021, Turkey extended its military presence in various African countries to fight against the
Islamic State's Sahil Province,
ISWAP, and
ISCAP.
2022 Turkey claimed to have arrested
Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, who was the third leader of the Islamic State. This turned out to be false
2023 In 2023, Turkey and the United States took joint action to further disrupt financing of the Islamic State. Turkey claimed in April that Turkish forces had killed
Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi in Syria, however in August, the Islamic State said that Quraishi was killed during clashes against
Tahrir al-Sham, whom it accused to be agents of Turkish intelligence. On December, the Turkish
Police arrested at least 304 people suspected of links to the Islamic State during simultaneous
raids conducted across the country.
2024 On January 28, 2024, two Islamic State gunmen (a Tajik and a Russian) entered the
Church of Santa Maria, a
Roman Catholic church located in
Sarıyer, Istanbul, and shot at churchgoers, killing 52 year old Tuncer Cihan.
2025 On April 16, 2025, Turkish authorities arrest 89 individuals suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State during coordinated security operations in 17 provinces, including
Istanbul,
Antalya,
Gaziantep,
Hatay and
Van. In September 2025, Turkish police arrest 161 people suspected of being members of the
Islamic State (IS) and seize
unlicensed weapons and IS documents in raids in 38
provinces, including
Istanbul and
Ankara. On the morning of September 8, 2025,
a mass shooting occurred at the Salih Isgoren police station in the
Balçova district of
İzmir, Turkey. Leaving 3 police officers dead, and 4 people injured. In December 2025, Turkish police detained 115 suspected members of the
ISIS militant group in coordinated raids across the country over alleged plots linked to Christmas and New Year celebrations. The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that ISIS was planning to carry out actions targeting the celebrations, especially non-Muslim individuals, within the scope of the upcoming Christmas and New Year.
Operation in Yalova On 29 December 2025, at 2 a.m. local time, Turkish police conducted an operation on a rural detached house in the Elmali district of the
Yalova Province. During the first hour of the operation, 3 Turkish police officers were seriously injured and later died in the hospital. The operation continued with the arrival of
Special Operations Police, and ISIS militants fired back at the police until 9:00 a.m. At this moment, a total of 9 police officers (including a
bekçi police) were injured. At 9:40 a.m., a
smoke bomb was thrown into the house, and then an intervention was carried out.
2026 == See also ==