Turkey arrested dozens of people accused of spying for Israel on Tuesday, according to the country’s interior minister.
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization and the counterterrorism bureau of the Istanbul prosecutor’s office detained 33 people as part of “Operation Mole,” Ali Yerlikaya announced on Tuesday. The efforts were aimed at disrupting Mossad efforts to target foreign nationals in Turkey. Yerlikaya claimed the accused were planning to kidnap people.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a vocal critic of Israel and how its military has carried out its operations in Gaza to target Hamas. Last month, Erdogan compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and likened Israel’s attacks on Gaza to the treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis.
“They used to speak ill of Hitler. What difference do you have from Hitler? They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not,” the Turkish leader said. “He is richer than Hitler, he gets the support from the West. All sorts of support comes from the United States. And what did they do with all this support? They killed more than 20,000 Gazans.”
Israeli leaders have said they intend to track down Hamas’s leaders, even those who are not in Gaza, after the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history. Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians, in the Oct. 7 massacre. Netanyahu said in November he had “instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are” in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar said in a recording that was published in early December that Israel is determined to kill Hamas’s leaders “in every location” in the world, including in Turkey, Qatar, and Lebanon.
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“In every location, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everyone,” he said in recordings aired by the Kan public broadcaster. “It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it.”
Hamas’s deputy leader abroad, Saleh al Arouri, was reportedly killed in an Israeli strike in a suburb of Beirut, according to the Hezbollah-linked al Mayadeen.
