Pro-Hamas demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey, carry a banner calling for Israel’s elimination. Photo: Reuters/Dilara Senkaya

Turkish media outlets carried lurid headlines about supposed Israeli espionage on Tuesday after Ankara’s intelligence services announced a wave of arrests targeting an alleged Mossad network operating in the country.

While key details of the operation’s scope were divulged, there was near silence on other significant matters, such as the identities of those arrested and the Hamas-linked targets they allegedly chose.

According to a statement issued by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), 33 suspects out of a total of 46 were detained in a nationwide operation, while another 13 reportedly remain at large. Officials raided several addresses in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities, including the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in the southeast of Turkey.

Turkish authorities said those arrested had been planning the “kidnap” of pro-Hamas figures residing in Turkey. No information was supplied on how these suspects were apparently groomed by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, although one outlet, Aydinlik, claimed somewhat improbably that the contacts had been initiated on “social media.”

In addition to the arrests, nearly 150,000 Euros and $24,000 were seized in cash, along with firearms.

Media coverage of the arrests stressed the comments of Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, that were recorded at a meeting in early December and then published by Israeli news outlets. Bar pledged that Israel would target Hamas operatives in “every location, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everyone.”

An unnamed Turkish official quoted by the Reuters news agency claimed that “necessary warnings were made to the interlocutors based on the news of Israeli officials’ statements, and it was expressed to Israel that [such an act] would have serious consequences.”

Long hostile to Israel, the regime of Turkey’s Islamist President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has upped its harsh rhetoric in the wake of the Oct. 7 pogrom carried out by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel.

Erdogan himself stated in a Dec. 4 speech that Israel’s military response in Gaza would eventually pose a threat to Turkey’s “own security and territorial integrity.”

“We know very well that those who occupy Gaza today will set their sights on other places tomorrow,” Erdogan told a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). “As a matter of fact, they do not even feel the need to hide these intentions anymore. Gaza butcher Netanyahu himself revealed in front of the cameras that the issue is not Gaza or Ramallah but that he is pursuing expansionist goals.”