The Turkish police have detained 13 people on charges of espionage for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, weeks after the Tel Aviv regime threatened to target members of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas living abroad, including Turkey.
In a post on his X account on Tuesday, Turkish Justice Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced that the suspects were arrested during an operation dubbed “Operation Mole” after police raided 57 locations in Istanbul and seven other provinces.
The Turkish minister went on to say that the suspects were believed to be aiming to identify, monitor, assault and kidnap foreign nationals living in Turkey, stressing, “We will never allow espionage activities against the national unity and solidarity of our country.”
“During searches carried out during the operation, 143,830 euros, $23,680, various amounts of cash from different countries, a large number of cartridges and digital materials were confiscated,” he added.
Yerlikaya further emphasized that Turkey is determined to fight organized crime and foreign intelligence activities.
Another 13 suspects remain at large, according to Anadolu agency.
Turkish police have previously broken up spy networks targeting Palestinians living in the country.
Back in July, Turkish authorities said they had uncovered and disrupted a vast “ghost” Mossad spy network centered in Istanbul, following months of surveillance.
The substantial efforts by Turkey’s MIT exposed 56 operatives allegedly spying on non-Turkish citizens in Turkey in the service of Mossad.
Also in May, Turkish media outlets reported that local authorities had managed to arrest 11 people suspected of being part of a Mossad-led network.
Turkey also broke Mossad-aligned spy rings in 2021 and 2022.
The latest arrests came a month after Israel’s Kan news network aired a recording in which Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s internal spy agency – known as Shin Bet – said Tel Aviv was determined to kill Hamas leaders “in every location” around the world.
“In Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everyone,” Bar added in the recordings. “It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it.”
At the time, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Israel of a “heavy price” if the Tel Aviv regime carries out its plot to target members of Hamas on Turkish soil.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long suppression and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed 21,978 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured some 57,700 others.
Erdogan has been vocal in denouncing Israel’s relentless strikes on Gaza and has already said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will eventually be “tried as a war criminal.”
Turkey and Israel have maintained some form of diplomatic ties, as both sides took a step towards normalizing their relations by reappointing ambassadors after years of tension However, the current Gaza war has deteriorated their bilateral relations significantly.
