On Monday, Turkey’s Sabah daily released images of 15 men who the newspaper claims worked for Israel’s Mossad intelligence organization.
There has been no official confirmation from Turkey of the arrests, and it is unclear how the newspaper interviewed an individual who was identified only by his initials, M.A.S. if he had been detained.
According to a report published by Sabah last week, the arrests took place on October 7th, after a year-long operation by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) involving 200 Turkish intelligence operatives who tracked down the alleged spies.
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The photographs appear to be mugshots of the individuals taken by Turkish officials, with initials purporting to be their names. The paper did not provide any additional information.
According to the report, the arrested senior spy, identified only as “AZ,” is a Mossad officer based in Germany who was supposedly in charge of the network.
AZ had six aliases, according to reports, while the other agents, all of Arab heritage, were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for intelligence on the Turkish resistance.
Agent “BUT,” a 21-year-old in charge of gathering information on Arab citizens in Turkey; “AJA,” a 29-year-old in charge of transferring money sent from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the Palestinian Authority; and “ARA,” a 29-year-old who collected information about Arab citizens living in luxury housing in Istanbul and passed it on to the Mossad, are among those arrested in the operation.
Each of the 15 Mossad agents was said to be a part of one of five spy cells.
Officials in Turkey claimed that this was the country’s largest intelligence operation since the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi, which was blamed on Saudi Arabia.
“I met with a Mossad official face to face,” M.A.S. told Sabah that he showed him how to encrypt files on his laptop.
According to the article, the individual, who owns a company that provides consultancy services to international students in Istanbul was interested in monitoring Palestinians activity.
He said he was approached first by a man claiming to represent an Arab student from Germany who wanted to study in Turkey.
Hundreds of euros were first provided to the individual in exchange for information on how Palestinian students were admitted to Turkish colleges and the level of support they received from Turkish authorities.
He claimed he earned $10,000 over the course of three years in exchange for supplying customer information about a Palestinian organization operating in Turkey. Some of the money was delivered by Western Union, and some was given to him at an Istanbul market when he presented his ID and a receipt.
