The Turkish police and secret services (MIT), in cooperation with their counterparts in Israel, have recently dismantled an Iranian network that planned to attack Israeli citizens in Turkey, according to local press reports and confirmed on Thursday by the Israeli foreign minister, Yair Lapid, at a press conference in Ankara during his last official visit in office before his appointment as prime minister next week. Turkish police have arrested at least eight people.

“In recent weeks, the lives of Israeli citizens have been saved thanks to diplomatic and security cooperation between Israel and Turkey. Iran is behind these attempted terror attacks. The intelligence information leaves no room for doubt. We are not just talking about the murder of innocent Israeli tourists, but about a clear violation of Turkish sovereignty by Iranian terrorism,” Lapid denounced. His Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, stated that “a message has been given” to the Tehran authorities: “We will never allow these threats to occur in our country.”

Several Iranians have been killed or killed in Iran in mysterious circumstances in the last two months, in what are suspected to be Israeli Mossad operations as part of the covert war between the two countries. Of the deceased, two are scientists who, according to an Iranian source quoted by The New York Timeswere poisoned, and another, a Revolutionary Guard colonel who was allegedly working on a plan to attack Israeli, American and French targets.

Tehran’s warning that it intends to avenge these deaths has put Israel on alert. At the beginning of last week, the Foreign Ministry of the Hebrew State launched an appeal for its citizens to leave Istanbul “as soon as possible” and restrict their trips to Turkey. Even then, he stressed that there had been “attempted Iranian terrorist attacks” against Israeli citizens. This Thursday, several Turkish media published that, on June 17, the Turkish police arrested eight individuals – five of them Iranian citizens, allegedly spies, and the rest “local collaborators” – in a hotel and three rental apartments in the central Istanbul’s Beyoglu district. According to the Turkish press, two pistols, two silencers and numerous documents and digital material were seized from them. The purpose of the plot was allegedly to target Israeli tourists and a retired diplomat. Some Turkish media claim that the suspects have been transferred by the Mossad to Israel.

It is not the first time that Iranian operatives have been detected or dismantled in Turkish territory. On May 30, the Iranian opposition journalist Bagher Moradi disappeared in Ankara – where he lived after fleeing his country almost a decade ago – and his family has denounced that he could have been kidnapped by Iranian agents. Last year, a former Iranian Army pilot reported several kidnapping attempts, after which eight people were detained by the Turkish police. Also in 2021, an employee of the Iranian consulate was arrested for his involvement in the assassination, two years earlier, of former Iranian spy Masud Molavi Vardanjani, exiled in Turkey. And, in 2020, 13 people were arrested for their involvement in a plot against Arab-Iranian activist Habib Chaab, who was kidnapped in Turkey and taken to Iran.

“Our immediate goal is to restore the necessary calm to change our travel warnings to Turkey, which is the number one destination for Israelis,” Lapid said in Ankara. Israeli Prime Minister in péctore He explained that, over the past year, “there has been great progress in relations between Israel and Turkey” and, in fact, both countries have agreed to restore their relations at the level of ambassadors, absent from their respective posts since the bloody Israeli crackdown on Turkey. the protests in Gaza in 2018. However, the Turkish foreign minister warned that this process of “normalization” with Israel will not change his country’s policy regarding Palestine.

Support from Iranian allies to the Kurdish PKK

One of the reasons for this growing collaboration between the governments of Turkey and Israel is the growing tension between Ankara and Tehran, despite the fact that they had maintained close relations in the past. In addition to the actions of Iranian agents on Turkish territory, Turkey is increasingly upset with the Islamic Republic’s rapprochement with the Kurdish armed group PKK. In Iraq, pro-Iranian Shia militias have established intense cooperation with the PKK and its local allies around the Yazidi area of ​​Sinjar, against Turkish and Israeli operations. peshmerga of the KDP (the ruling party in Iraqi Kurdistan, an ally of Ankara). In turn, Turkey has tried to influence in favor of a government coalition between the parliamentary group of the anti-Iranian Shiite cleric Múqtada Al Sadr, the KDP and the Sunni bloc, although the efforts have been in vain and Sadrist MPs recently decided to leave their seats, which will probably precipitate the formation of an Executive more favorable to Tehran.

In Syria, a joint command room has been formed with the participation of representatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, local Shiite militias, the PKK, the YPG Kurdish-Syrian militias, Russia and groups favorable to the Bashar al-Assad regime to confront a new Turkish military incursion in the north of the country, with which the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening for weeks. The objective, according to Ankara, is to wrest control of areas near the Turkish border from the militias linked to the Kurdish armed group, which is considered terrorist by Turkey itself, the European Union and the United States (despite which Washington collaborates with the YPG militias in the northeast of the country).

Opposition to Iran has also played a role in the reconciliation between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, although in this case economic reasons weigh more heavily. On Wednesday, the crown prince and strong man of the Saudi monarchy, Mohamed Bin Salman, met in Ankara with Erdogan and both countries agreed to improve cooperation in the military, diplomatic and economic fields. The thaw has been brewing since last April, when a Turkish court decided to suspend the trial of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which occurred in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and was perpetrated by a team of agents linked to Bin Salmán.

Turkey, which is experiencing a crisis situation with inflation above 70% (more than double, according to independent calculations), seeks to resume exports to Saudi Arabia ―which had been practically stopped due to the boycott―, the return of tourism from the Kingdom and that Riyadh approve investments and a currency exchange (swap) to increase the reserves of the Turkish Central Bank.

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