The operation follows a series of clashes and attacks linked to ISIL, which is feared to be making a resurgence.

Turkiye’s government says it has detained more than 100 ISIL (ISIS) suspects in nationwide raids, as the group shows signs of intensified regional activity after a period of relative dormancy.

Turkiye’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced the Wednesday morning arrests in a social media post, saying Turkish authorities rounded up 125 suspects across 25 provinces, including Ankara.

The operation is the third of its kind in less than a week during the holiday season, and follows a deadly shootout on Tuesday between Turkish police and suspected ISIL members in the northwestern city of Yalova.

“Those who seek to harm our brotherhood, our unity, our togetherness … will only face the might of our state and the unity of our nation,” wrote Yerlikaya.

Tuesday’s clash killed three Turkish police and six suspected ISIL members, all Turkish nationals. A day later, Turkish security forces arrested 357 suspected ISIL members in a coordinated crackdown.

‘Intensifying’ anti-ISIL operations

Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul earlier this week, said Turkish forces have “intensified their operations” against ISIL sleeper cells during the holiday period, a time when the group has previously staged attacks in the country.

In 2017, when the group still held large swaths of neighbouring Syria and Iraq before being vanquished on the battlefield, ISIL attacked an Istanbul nightclub during New Year’s celebrations, killing 39 people. Istanbul prosecutor’s office said Turkish police had received intelligence that operatives were “planning attacks in Turkiye against non-Muslims in particular” this holiday season.

On top of maintaining sleeper cells in Turkiye, ISIL is still active in Syria, with which Turkiye shares a 900-kilometre (560-mile) border, and has carried out a spate of attacks there since the ouster of former President Bashar al-Assad last year.

The United States military has waged extensive strikes against ISIL in central and northeastern Syria this month, killing or capturing about 25 fighters from the group over the past two weeks, according to the US Central Command.

Those operations followed the killing of two American soldiers and an interpreter in an attack in the Syrian city of Palmyra by what the US said was an ISIL gunman.

Hundreds of thousands of people travelled from across Bangladesh to the capital Dhaka on Wednesday to pay their final respects to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.

Zia, who was the country’s first female prime minister, died on Tuesday from a prolonged illness. She was 80.

The mourners held out their hands in prayer and carried flags printed with her photographs as a motorcade carrying Zia’s body – including the hearse wrapped with the national flag – drove on streets near the parliament house.

Flags were flown at half-mast and thousands of security officers have been deployed.

“I have come this far just to say goodbye. I know I won’t be able to see her face, but at least I could see the [vehicle] carrying her for the last rites,” Setara Sultana, an activist from Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), told the BBC.

Sharmina Siraj, a mother of two, called Zia “an inspiration”, noting that stipends introduced by the former leader to improve women’s education made a “huge impact” on her daughters.

“It is difficult to imagine women in leadership positions anytime soon,” she told AFP news agency.

India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, the Speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq and Bhutan’s Foreign Minister Lyonpo DN Dhungyel were among those who attended the funeral.

Earlier in the day, Zia’s body was taken to the house of her son Tarique Rahman, who was seen reciting the Quran beside his mother’s office.

Zia will be buried next to her husband Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981 while serving as president – an incident that thrusted Zia into political limelight.

She went on to lead the BNP in the country’s first elections in 20 years. She was dubbed an “uncompromising leader” after refusing to participate in a controversial election under military ruler General Hussain Muhammad Ershad in the 1980s.

Her career, which included spells in prison and house arrest, was defined by a bitter feud with her arch-rival Sheikh Hasina.

Over the past 16 years, under Hasina’s Awami League government, Zia emerged as the most prominent symbol of resistance to Hasina’s rule many saw as increasingly autocratic.

Despite Zia’s illness, the BNP said she had intended to run for parliament in February, when the country will vote for the first time since a popular revolution last year unseated Hasina.

According to the party’s candidate list released earlier this month, Zia was to contest in three constituencies.

The party is eyeing a return to power, and if that happens, Zia’s son Tarique Rahman is expected to become the country’s new leader. Rahman, 60, had only returned to Bangladesh last week after 17 years in self-imposed exile in London.

“The country mourns the loss of a guiding presence that shaped its democratic aspirations,” Rahman said following his mother’s passing on Tuesday.

Iran’s government has pledged to “listen patiently” to the concerns of protesters, as demonstrations prompted by the plummeting currency and dire economic conditions have spread from Tehran to several other cities.

Students took to the streets in the capital on Tuesday, while protests also broke out at universities and institutions in the cities of Isfahan, Yazd and Zanjan, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Ilna, a news agency associated with Iran’s labour movement, reported that protests were held at 10 universities across the country, including seven in the capital.

The demonstrations marked the third consecutive day of protests in Iran since shopkeepers near two main tech and mobile phone shopping centres, in Tehran’s Jomhouri area and near the Grand Bazaar, closed their businesses and took to the streets on Sunday in response to the rial plunging to record lows, forcing up import prices and hurting retail traders.

The rial has been rapidly declining over recent weeks as the United States and its Western allies pile on sanctions and diplomatic pressure, and was trading at about 1.42 million rials to the US dollar when protests broke out on Sunday, compared with 820,000 rials a year ago.

The country’s economy, battered by decades of Western sanctions, has been under further strain since late September, when the United Nations reinstated international sanctions that had been lifted 10 years ago, linked to the country’s nuclear programme.

Government pledges to listen

Responding to the growing protests, a government spokesperson said the government would listen to the concerns of the demonstrators.

“The government will listen patiently, even if there are harsh voices, because we believe that our people are patient enough, and when their voices are raised, the pressure that is being put on them is high,” Fatemeh Mohajerani said at a news conference in Tehran.

“The government’s job is to hear the voices and help them reach a common understanding to solve the problems that exist in society.”

She said the government recognised the right to peaceful assembly.

“We see, hear, and recognise officially all the protests, the difficulties, and the crises.”

The comments came as President Masoud Pezeshkian met Tuesday with labour leaders and made proposals to tackle the economic crisis, the semi-official Mehr News Agency reported.

Pezeshkian said he had instructed government officials to listen to protesters’ “legitimate demands” and pledged to protect their livelihoods, which he said was his “daily concern”.

Low public faith in government

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said the Iranian public did not have faith in the government’s ability to address the economic problems.

“The president himself came out about a week or so ago and said that he can’t do anything about these problems,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Much of the lack of faith in the government’s ability to address these problems is actually because of statements by the government itself.”

He said the big question now was whether the protests would gather momentum and evolve into a broader channelling of public anger over issues other than the country’s economic problems.

“Protests at times can start based on economic grievances, which is the case here, but quickly morph into other demands,” he said, adding that the situation in Iran “both politically as well as economically, has been very bad”.

Multiple challenges

Iran’s economic problems are severe, with inflation at about 50 percent as well as a depreciating currency.

But they are far from the only challenges facing the country, which is also dealing with an exacerbating energy crisis, while most dams feeding Tehran and many other big cities remain at near-empty levels amid a severe water crisis.

The country also has one of the most restricted internet environments in the world.

Iranian state media reporting on the protests has emphasised that they are motivated by the unchecked depreciation of the rial, rather than wider disenchantment with the theocratic establishment that has been ruling the country since the 1979 revolution.

Iran last saw nationwide protests in 2022 and 2023, with thousands pouring into the streets across the country after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for alleged noncompliance with strict Islamic laws regarding headscarves.

Hundreds of people were killed, more than 20,000 were arrested, and several were executed in connection with the protests.