ISTANBUL: Turkiye announced on Tuesday it had detained 33 people suspected of planning abductions and spying on behalf of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the suspects were rounded up in raids across Istanbul and seven other provinces.

It was not immediately clear if they were Israeli nationals or locals allegedly working with Mossad.

Yerlikaya’s office relea­s­ed video footage showing armed security service agents breaking down doors and handcuffing suspects in their homes.

The Istanbul public prosecutor’s office said 13 additional suspects remained at large.

The raids came weeks after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of “serious consequences” should Israel attempt to target figures from Hamas living or working in Turkiye.

“There is an insidious operation and sabotage attempts being made against Turkiye and its interests,” Erdogan said after the raids were announced. “We will definitely destroy this game,” he said in televised remarks.

Relations between Turkiye and Israel imploded following the outbreak of the war in Gaza nearly three months ago. Erdogan has turned into one of the world’s harshest critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Turkish leader last week compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and demanded that Israel’s Western allies drop their support for the “terrorism” being conducted by Israeli troops in Gaza.

Erdogan has also recalled Ankara’s envoy to Tel Aviv, and pushed for the trial of Israeli commanders and political leaders at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The president’s ruling Islamic conservative AKP party also led tens of thousands of protesters out on the streets of Istanbul on Monday for one of Turkiye’s biggest anti-Israel rallies of the entire war.

End of thaw

The Gaza crisis ended a gradual thawing in Turkish-Israeli relations that culminated with the reappointment of ambassadors in 2022. Israel and Turkiye resumed long-stalled talks about a major Mediterranean Sea natural gas pipeline project that could have reshaped geopolitical alliances across parts of the Middle East.

Turkiye won words of gratitude from Israel in 2022 for detaining a group of Turkish and Iranian nationals were allegedly planning to murder and kidnap Israeli tourists in Istanbul.

Erdogan and Netanyahu met briefly on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York in September and were discussing holding a formal summit this year.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2024