The Turkish-Israeli relationship became so poisonous
early last year that the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan is said to have disclosed to Iranian intelligence the
identities of up to 10 Iranians who had been meeting inside Turkey with
their Mossad case officers.
Knowledgeable sources describe the Turkish action as a
“significant” loss of intelligence and “an effort to slap the Israelis.”
The incident, disclosed here for the first time, illustrates the
bitter, multi-dimensional spy wars that lie behind the current
negotiations between Iran and Western nations over a deal to limit the
Iranian nuclear program. A Turkish Embassy spokesman had no comment.
Israeli anger at the deliberate compromise of its agents may help
explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became so entrenched in
his refusal to apologize to Erdogan about the
May 2010 Gaza flotilla incident
. In that confrontation at sea, Israeli commandos boarded a
Turkish-organized convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Nine Turks were killed.
Netanyahu finally apologized to Erdogan by phone in March after President Obama negotiated a compromise
formula. But for more than a year before that, the Israeli leader had
resisted entreaties from Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to
heal the feud.
Top Israeli officials believe that, despite the
apology, the severe strain with Erdogan continues. The Turkish
intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, is also suspect in Israel because of what are seen as friendly links with Tehran;
several years ago, Israeli intelligence officers are said to have
described him facetiously to CIA officials as “the MOIS station chief in
Ankara,” a reference to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
The United States continued to deal with Fidan on sensitive matters,
however.
Though U.S. officials regarded exposure of the Israeli
network as an unfortunate intelligence loss, they didn’t protest
directly to Turkish officials. Instead, Turkish-American relations
continued warming last year to the point that Erdogan was among Obama’s key confidants. This practice of separating intelligence issues from broader policymaking is said to be a long-standing U.S. approach.
U.S. officials were never sure whether the Turkish disclosure was
done in retaliation for the flotilla incident or was part of a broader
deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations.
Israeli intelligence had apparently run part of its Iranian spy
network through Turkey, which has relatively easy movement back and
forth across its border with Iran. The Turkish intelligence service,
known as the Milli Istihbarat Teskilati,
or MIT, conducts aggressive surveillance inside its borders, so it had
the resources to monitor Israeli-Iranian covert meetings.
U.S.
officials assessed the incident as a problem of misplaced trust, rather
than bad tradecraft. They reasoned that the Mossad, after more than 50
years of cooperation with Turkey, never imagined the Turks would “shop”
Israeli agents to a hostile power, in the words of one source. But
Erdogan presented a unique challenge, as he moved in 2009 to champion the Palestinian cause and, in various ways, steered Ankara away from what had been, in effect, a secret partnership with Jerusalem.
The Israeli-Turkish intelligence alliance was launched in a secret meeting in August 1958 in Ankara between David Ben-Gurion, then Israel’s prime minister, and Adnan Menderes,
then Turkey’s prime minister. “The concrete result was a formal but
top-secret agreement for comprehensive cooperation” between the Mossad
and Turkish intelligence, wrote Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman in their 2012
book, “Spies Against Armageddon.”
The groundwork had been laid secretly by Reuven Shiloah,
the founding director of the Mossad, as part of what he called a
“peripheral alliance strategy.” Through that partnership, Israelis
provided training in espionage to the Turks and, ironically, also to
Iranians under the shah’s government, which was toppled in 1979.
Fidan,
the Turkish spy chief, is a key Erdogan adviser. He became head of the
MIT in 2010 after serving as a noncommissioned officer in the Turkish
army and gaining a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland and
a doctorate in Ankara. After Fidan took over the Turkish service, “he
rattled Turkey’s allies by allegedly passing to Iran sensitive
intelligence collected by the U.S. and Israel,” according to a recent profile in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal also noted U.S. fears that Fidan was arming jihadist rebels in Syria.
The
Netanyahu-Erdogan quarrel, with its overlay of intelligence thrust and
parry, is an example of the kaleidoscopic changes that may be ahead in
the Middle East. The United States, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
are all exploring new alliances and struggling to find a new
equilibrium — overtly and covertly.
WASHINGTON POST, 17/10/2013
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