Mossad and VEVAK targeted by Turkish counter-espionage service

Turkish intelligence service MIT, which is already heavily engaged outside Turkey, is also making a particular effort to strengthen its counter-espionage department with a view to detecting potentially subversive operations in Turkey itself. After recruiting new agents from the national intelligence training centre and the intelligence academy, MIT, under its head, Hakan Fidan, carried out a number of operations last month that enabled it to break up networks potentially linked to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, VEVAK , and Israeli intelligence service Mossad .

VEVAK in Turkey

After having been shaken by the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, MIT has been working hard to improve its counter-espionage capacity. It has been particularly targeting agents of the Iranian intelligence services operating on Turkish territory. On 9 October, it succeeded in breaking up a network set up by Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an Iranian Kurd with Turkish nationality. A year ago, a cell led by him was behind the abduction of Habib Asyoud, a leader of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, which has its roots in the Sunni Arab community in Iran’s Khuzestan Province and is backed by the Saudi intelligence services. Similarly, on 13 October, MIT’s counter-espionage service foiled an Iranian attempt to kidnap a former military pilot who had been a member of the Pasdarans before going into exile in Turkey.

Hamas renegades

Hakan Fidan has also been keeping a close eye on the activities of Mossad, which is keen to recruit Arabs, particularly Palestinians, as a mean of infiltrating Hamas networks in Turkey. Numerous officials of the movement, which governs the Gaza Strip, have gone into exile in Turkey. On 7 October, after a year of surveillance and shadowing, MIT succeeded in breaking up five Mossad cells run from bases in Switzerland and Croatia. This coordinated operation was hailed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan who congratulated Fidan and the six other officials involved in the operation.

In October, MIT also arrested a network of Russians and Uzbeks active in Istanbul and Antalya. They were spying on Chechen and Caucasian opposition figures and military sites. They were particularly keen to photograph the plants in Istanbul where Baykar Makina manufactures its Bayraktar and Akinci drones  .