The Counter-Intelligence Department of the Istanbul Regional Presidency of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has reportedly been monitoring the activities of the Israeli Secret Service in Türkiye. According to information obtained by MIT, the Mossad recruited individuals with intelligence and tracking skills and provided them with training abroad.
Seven individuals, including Ahmet Koray Özgürün, Alperen Erkut, Halid Alnebhen, Gizvan Amori, Nizar Saaddeddin, Muhammed Murii, and Khaled Nijim, who were apprehended in a political and military espionage operation organized by the Anti-Terrorism Branch of the Istanbul Police Department, confessed to working for Mossad during their interrogations. It is believed that a total of 56 individuals across 9 cells are connected to Mossad.
MIT discovered that the Israeli state established a remote online operation team based in Tel Aviv, consisting of individuals from various Middle Eastern countries. They also set up fake internet news sites, particularly in Arabic, to gather biographical intelligence and obtain real IP addresses and location information using technical means. The extensive intelligence network, led and directed by 9 different Israeli intelligence officers affiliated with Mossad, has gained international operational capability.
Further investigations revealed that all contacts with foreign personnel in Türkiye were conducted using hundreds of disposable internet data lines belonging to fictitious individuals from Spain, England, Germany, Sweden, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Belgium. Mossad member "Shirin Alayan," one of the cell leaders, whose real identity remains unknown, established internet-based news sites such as "najarland.com," "almeshar.com," "nasrin-news.com," and "hresource.co.uk" to attract the attention of target individuals. Through these sites, the phones of targeted individuals were infected with spyware by clicking on infected links.
A Tel Aviv-based spyware company named Cyberintellingence International Private Ltd, led by Priyanshi Patel Kulhari, played a role in providing remote cyber training and technical support to Mossad intelligence officers operating in Istanbul. Kulhari, a cyber intelligence expert working for Mossad, maintained constant communication with the spies in Istanbul, determining how to infiltrate target individuals' phones with spyware and which news links to use.
MIT also discovered that the Arab-origin spies recruited by Mossad in Istanbul were sent to Lebanon and Syria for intelligence gathering and reconnaissance purposes. Mossad-affiliated offices were established in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sweden. However, all operations were directed from Tel Aviv. The spies' skills and commitment were assessed by photographing well-known tourist sites such as mosques, churches, the Grand Bazaar, and the Spice Bazaar, which were falsely labelled as legitimate pursuits.
The agency's activities were conducted in five different stages, with distance operational training provided at each step. Intelligence personnel who successfully completed the fifth stage were secretly sent to foreign countries for further training as professional intelligence officers. Mossad-recruited Lebanese and Syrian individuals in Istanbul were sent to the Haret Hreik region in Beirut for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. The Mossad officer known as "Abdulla Qassem," a Jordanian Arab living in Sweden, oversaw the security of a strategically important building in the Qudsiye region of Damascus. Zeyd Saadeddin was assigned to analyze and photograph the building in detail.
Mossad discreetly sent numerous spies, including Turkish individuals, to Serbia as the first step, followed by Dubai, and then Bangkok, Thailand, using a three-stage method of intelligence concealment. These three countries were chosen because Turkish citizens did not require visas to enter. The spies' journey, starting from Istanbul, concluded in Bangkok, where they received intelligence training. One of the fugitive spies, Okan Albayrak, who was taken to Thailand to a secret Mossad training center, provided intelligence reports and received one-on-one technical and tactical intelligence training, including satellite tracking and GPS device placement.
MIT's Counter-Intelligence Department uncovered Mossad's efforts to escalate its espionage activities in Türkiye and developed complex methods to evade MIT detection. Mossad members based in Istanbul, such as Muhammed Filli and Abdullah Fallaha, who were originally from Aleppo, targeted the Trend GYO office of Hisham Younis Yahya Qafisheh in Kağıthane. They planned to steal Qafisheh's phone and stole computers and documents from a residence in Başakşehir.
In addition to monitoring Filli and Fallaha, Mossad spies in Istanbul conducted surveillance on an Egyptian opposition journalist, an Egyptian doctor in a medical center in Fatih, and an Egyptian employee working in a currency exchange office in Fatih Aksaray. They also carried out activities related to an association called "Beyaz Eller." Soliman Agbaria, an Israeli citizen of Arab origin born in 1957, arrived in Türkiye from Israel, and Mossad spies surveilled all possible bilateral meetings in Istanbul.
