Turkey starts repatriating captured Islamic State fighters

ISTANBUL — Turkey on Monday started making good on its vow to send foreign fighters who were captured in Syria back to their home countries, including one it sent to the United States, the Interior Ministry told the state-run news agency.

“One American foreign terrorist fighter whose proceedings are completed has been deported,” ministry spokesman Ismail Catakli was quoted as saying by the Anadolu agency.

Procedures to deport 11 French citizens and seven Germans, along with others from Denmark and Ireland, were under way, Catakli added, with the German citizens scheduled to be sent back Thursday. He described the detainees as “foreign terrorist fighters.”

Western countries have strongly resisted taking back fighters for the Islamic State group, or their wives and children.

The Turkish Interior Ministry identified the American who was deported Monday as an Islamic State fighter. During the recent military operation in Syria, Turkish-backed militias announced that they had captured people affiliated with the Islamic State — most of them women and children — and pro-Kurdish fighters.

Several Americans and Europeans traveled to Syria to join the Kurdish-led forces that wrested control of northeastern Syria from the Islamic State. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces became allied with the United States to combat the Islamic State, and opposed Turkey’s incursion last month.

Turkey regards the Syrian Kurdish militia as a terrorist organization because of its ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been waging an insurgency inside Turkey for three decades. Turkey also considers the Islamic State a terrorist organization and has detained several hundred members of that organization in Turkey.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government said...