Mossad Activities in Turkey

Al Jazeera (2023)

Film Review

Istanbul is a magnet for refugees, a common target for Mossad recruitment owing to their precarious finances. In 2000, Turkey severed diplomatic relations with Israel over their continued brutal occupation of Palestine. In 2022, they restored diplomatic relations despite the October 2021 arrest of 16 refugees spying for the Mossad. Most were students at Turkish universities.

Hamas operates openly in Turkey and apparently this is something the Mossad seeks to change.

The Turkish government has published audio recordings and social media posts of Mossad officers trying to build spy networks in several cities. The tapes reveal a deliberate effort by Mossad officers to tap recruits studying science and engineering, particularly those with ties to Palestinian leaders.

The filmmakers interviews several refugees who became informants for Turkish intelligence after the Mossad tried to recruit them. One Mossad agent posed as a Saudi businessman who “wanted to help students,” others posed as NATO officers or EU security personnel. Most of the the informants became suspicious when their new “friends” changed their job title, their location or the requests they were making.

Typical requests included names and phone numbers of friends and relatives involved with Hamas in Turkey and information on gatherings of Palestinian students.

Mossad typical paid their Turkish recruits $US2,000/3,000 per month. One received a total of $200,000 US. They promised a refugee with a chronic a trip to the UK to see a famous doctor. In another case the Mossad arranged for an informant to collect a Swiss visa from their Istanbul consulate without going through the normal application process. In a fourth case, the recruiter promised to facilitate European visas for the informant to emigrate to Europe.

The way Turkish intelligence ultimately entrapped the Mossad spy ring was to create a fake Palestinian group on social media. When the Mossad enticed its members to donate to a fake online charity, Turkish intelligence hacked the website to identify other Palestinian recruits who were actively spying for the Mossad.

By December 2022, they had arrested 44 Palestinian refugees spying for the Mossad. At the time of filming, they were still awaiting trial.