Istanbul, Mar. 5, (dpa/GNA) – Turkish authorities detained seven suspects, including a former police chief, on Tuesday for allegedly selling information to Israeli spy agency Mossad, the state news agency Anadolu reported.
This is the third officially announced operation against alleged Mossad operatives inside Turkey since the start of the year.
Anti-terrorism and intelligence service units raided addresses to detain the suspects, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Police found pistols, drugs, digital materials and bugging device detectors at the suspects’ addresses, Yerlikaya added.
Among the suspects is former police chief Hamza Turhan Ayberk, local media, including broadcaster NTV, reported.
Ayberk is accused of leading a team, including public employees, to collect information for Mossad on certain Middle East-origin individuals and companies inside Turkey, Anadolu reported.
The suspects have not appeared in court yet.
Turkey has recently ramped up its targeting of alleged Mossad members inside the country.
In January, Turkish police detained 34 people over alleged “political or military espionage” for Mossad. Another seven were detained in February for allegedly selling information to Mossad on foreign nationals.
The operations followed a Wall Street Journal report that Israel’s secret services were preparing to track down and kill the leaders of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement around the world after the end of the Gaza war.
Turkey maintains links with the Hamas movement.
Islamic conservative Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejects classifying Hamas as terrorists, which European countries and the United States do.
GNA