A lot of interesting things have been taking place in the last 24 hours in Turkey, which, while seemingly unrelated to the Presidential elections that will be held in the country in 4 days from today, are nevertheless, in our opinion, directly related to them, since they highlight the leadership profile of Erdogan, updating Turkish voters.
So after the re-docking of the TCG Anadolu in Istanbul, originating from Izmir, and opening it to the public for the second time in a few days, we had the second successful test of the Tayfun missile that took place yesterday in the Black Sea, projecting a Turkey militarily omnipotent, with new weapon systems of its own.
The "icing on the cake" of Erdogan's projection as a powerful leader came in our estimation with the "discovery of the Israeli Mossad espionage network in Turkey, accompanied by 11 arrests", as reported by a reputable Israeli media, noting:
"Turkey's National Intelligence Service (MIT) and the Istanbul General Prosecutor's Office uncovered and arrested an 11-person Mossad cell operating in Turkey, according to Turkish newspaper Sabah.
The report by Turkey's media, which is not currently considered independent of the government, said the investigation into the Israeli core was conducted over a period of a year and a half.
According to information, Turkish authorities discovered that the cell had targeted a company and 23 people who had commercial relations with Iran.
The leader of the cell was identified as Selçuk Küçükkaya, Sabah reported.
Küçükkaya was allegedly recruited by the Mossad through a member of the Gülen movement.
While this movement is called the Fetullahist Terrorist Organization by Turkish officials, Gulen was a longtime supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan until the latter began to hold absolute power in recent years.
Last October and December, Turkey announced two separate alleged arrests of large numbers of Mossad-linked agents.
In fact, they included astonishing numbers of arrests, such as 44 people in December and about 15 in October, numbers that seemed too high for the agency to handle at the same time.
Even if some or many of the arrests in Iran and Turkey in 2022 were not actually Mossad agents, such announcements are often a convenient cover for neutralizing political rivals.
However, the waves of announced arrests of Mossad agents in several countries in a short period of time were unusual.
For example, the same Sabah report summarized the December 2022 arrest operation as focusing on seven people, as opposed to the 44 held at the time.
In 2021, a Mossad network of 15 Arabs was reported to have been arrested by MIT.
This report came just weeks after Hamas-linked media outlets claimed Palestinian spies were working for the Mossad in Turkey.
Paradoxically, Turkish intelligence and the Mossad have worked together several times in recent years to prevent terrorist attacks on Turkish soil.
Last September, a joint operation between Turkey and the Mossad saved the lives of a large number of Israeli tourists.
In this incident, Iran planned to kidnap several Israeli tourists and diplomats in Istanbul, including the former ambassador and his wife.
Some Israelis were distracted moments before a strike group would hit them.
Turkish intelligence and local police arrested nearly 10 suspects at the Sol Hotel and three other rental apartments in the Istanbul area.
Iranian intelligence and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers posed as students, businessmen and tourists to trap the Israelis.
Turkey said the Mossad identified the Israelis targeted and flew them to Israel on private planes.
While the Mossad had initially noted the risks and given Turkey time to handle the matter on its own, counterintelligence operations eventually took place in cooperation between the Mossad and the Turkish authorities, which were praised by then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
"Operational efforts with the Turkish security forces have borne fruit," he told a press conference. "Over the past few days, in a joint Israeli-Turkish effort, we have thwarted a number of terrorist attempts and many terrorists have been arrested on Turkish soil."
Immediately after the success of Mossad and Turkish intelligence efforts to rescue Israelis in Turkey, Iran fired the IRGC's powerful intelligence chief, Hossein Taem, Iranian state TV reported. The station did not elaborate on the firing of Taeb, who had been the IRGC's intelligence chief since 2009.
Curiously, since the Turkish-Mossad collaboration last September, this was the third Turkish claim to have taken down Mossad operatives."
The timing, just 4 days before the Turkish Presidential elections, of the dismantling of the Mossad network in Turkey by the MIT, after monitoring a period of one and a half years, "speaks" for itself.
The purpose is one, to show the Turkish voters that their country has a very capable leader, Erdogan, who has created a powerful army and a very capable Secret Service that dismantled the network of the world-renowned and recognized capabilities of the Israeli Mossad.
