Turkey exposed Israeli spy network in Iran
Still, Turkey recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv, kicked the Israeli ambassador out of Turkey, and announced that there would be no normalization of relationship until Israel apologized to Turkey for the attack and compensated the families of those killed and injured.
In March this year, during his visit to Israel, President Barak Obama managed to negotiate a deal which saw Israel offer an apology and agree to pay compensation in return for the resumption of diplomatic relationships. Some of the military cooperation between the two countries has also resumed.
In today’s Washington Post, David Ignatius reveals that the deterioration in relationship between Israel and Turkey led Turkey, eager to take revenge on Israel, to violate basic, if tacit, rules governing the craft of spying.
The Turkish-Israeli relationship became so acrimonious, that early last year Turkey gave Iran the names of ten Iranians who were employed by the Mossad as spies inside Iran, collecting important information on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The names of Israel’s Iranian spies became known to Turkish intelligence after the ten met, in Turkey, with their Israeli handlers.
Ignatius writes that Israel’s anger at the Turkish betrayal helps explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stubbornly refused, until Obama’s March deal, to apologize to Turkey for the May 2010 flotilla incident.
Top Israeli officials suspect that Hakan Fidan — the head since 2010 of Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, the Turkish intelligence service — was behind the “shopping” of the Israeli agents to a hostile power.
Fidan, who graduated from the University of Maryland, is known for his advocacy of a more assertive Turkish national security policy. One aspect of the more assertive policy, Fidan believes, should be creating more of a distance between Turkey and the United States.
This approach has led Fidan to pursue policies which may appear contradictory. Thus, to the consternation of the United States, he worked with Brazil to fashion a sham deal which would have offered Iran a way to keep its nuclear program intact while escaping the punishing economic sanctions imposed on the country (see “Iran’s nuclear fuel swap is a sham; sanctions may still be imposed,” HSNW, 19 May 2010; and Ben Frankel, “Cunning Iran wins again,” HSNW, 20 May 2013).
Fidan’s closeness to Iran has raised suspicions in the West. In a recent profile, the Wall Street Journal wrote that “he rattled Turkey’s allies by allegedly passing to Iran sensitive intelligence collected by the U.S. and Israel.”
In the last two years, however, he used the MIT to help arm Jihadist elements in Syria fighting Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad – but also fighting the West-supported moderate anti-Assad rebels.
Ignatius notes that the Turkish exposure of the Israeli network in Iran notwithstanding, the United States continues to deal with Fidan on sensitive issues.
Haaretz reports that shortly after the 2010 flotilla incident, the then-Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak voiced concern that Turkey could share Israeli intelligence secrets with Iran.
“There are quite a few secrets of ours (entrusted to Turkey) and the thought that they could become open to the Iranians over the next several months … is quite disturbing,” Israel’s Army Radio quoted him as saying in August 2010.
Haaretz also reports that officials in Ankara, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the Washington Post article as part of an attempt to discredit Turkey by foreign powers uncomfortable with its growing influence in the Middle East.
