Turkey starts the new year with a manhunt for the Mossad. It is a strong signal to Israel, which indicated that it would ‘eliminate’ Hamas members in Turkey.
33 people have been arrested in Turkey on suspicion of espionage for the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Tuesday. announced.
The suspects are said to have plotted to follow, attack and kidnap “foreigners in Turkey,” Yerlikaya said. He did not specify the nationality of these foreigners, but they almost certainly included members of Hamas and other Palestinian groups residing in Turkey. Turkey has been a base for Hamas members for years.
It was no secret that Israel targeted them. In early December, the Israeli state broadcaster published a recording in which the head of the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet specifically mentions Turkey, in addition to Qatar and Lebanon, as a country where the Mossad would carry out operations to “eliminate” Hamas members.
President Erdogan already responded at the time with a warning. “If they make such a mistake, they will pay a very heavy price,” he said the day after the Israeli announcement. “Everyone in the world is aware of the progress Turkey has made in intelligence and security.”
By now arresting suspected Mossad spies on such a large scale, Ankara is showing that it means business. The arrests took place in eight provinces of Turkey and were carried out with the help of Turkish intelligence services, Minister Yerlikaya said. Authorities are still looking for thirteen other suspects, state news agency Anadolu reports.
Sympathy for Hamas
It is yet another low point in the already miserable Turkish-Israeli relationship. Although ties between the two countries had improved slightly in recent years and after October 7 Ankara initially emphasized that it wanted to mediate between Israel and Hamas, Erdogan made increasingly fierce statements as the Israeli war violence in Gaza increased. of the Israelis. For example, he repeatedly called Prime Minister Netanyahu “the butcher of Gaza” and at the end of December he even compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Hamas, on the other hand, can count on sympathy in Ankara. Erdogan always emphasizes that in his view the organization is not a terrorist group, but a resistance movement. And although reports emerged at the end of October that Ankara had asked Hamas prominent figures in Turkey to leave the country, these reports have not been officially confirmed and it is highly questionable whether this actually happened. Sources confirm to NRC that Hamas is indeed present in Turkey.
This not only angers Israel, but also puts further pressure on Turkey’s ties with the West. Ankara’s positions towards Hamas “are completely at odds” with those of the EU, the European Commission wrote last November in a report on the state of Turkish-European relations. Washington sent a senior counter-terrorism official to Ankara around the same time. He said he was “deeply concerned” about Hamas’ ability to raise funds in Turkey – although he indicated that Washington had not detected any money flows from Turkey to Hamas since the Gaza war.
In any case, Erdogan will not care much about such Western rebukes. In the same speech in which he compared Netanyahu to Hitler, he emphasized that the West is complicit in war crimes because of its support for Israel. “What has [Israël] done with all that support? They killed twenty thousand Gazans with it.”
Despite his tough language, Erdogan has not canceled trade ties with Israel. There is a lot of criticism about this in working-class neighborhoods in Istanbul, where the streets are full of Palestinian flags. Many Turks, including Erdogan’s own supporters, want their president to go much further to stop Israel.
With the March municipal elections just around the corner, the AKP government is once again trying to convey the image that it fully supports the Palestinians. For example, associations affiliated with the AKP organized a massive pro-Palestinian demonstration on Istanbul’s famous Galata Bridge on New Year’s Day, attended by members of Erdogan’s family, among others.
Minister Yerlikaya also thought about the image. Underneath the tweet announcing the arrest of alleged Mossad spies, he posted a carefully staged video, complete with drone footage and stirring music, in which Turkish police cars race towards their target and Turkish officers push the suspects to the ground. A signal to Israel, but also to the Turkish voter.