Allied Intelligence — 2026-06-23

Escalating Intelligence War Between Israel and Turkey as Both Nations Expose Rival Spy Networks

BLUFMutual exposure cycles are locking both services into escalatory counterintelligence postures, making at least one additional public espionage incident likely within six months.

On June 21, the IDF and Shin Bet named five Hamas operatives in Turkey, alleging recruitment, weapons supply, and fund transfers for West Bank attacks under Istanbul-based commander Zaher Jabarin, whom Israeli officials said operated "unhindered" from Turkish soil 1. In February, Turkey's MIT and Istanbul police ran "Operation Monitum," arresting two individuals the Levant Files identifies as Mehmet Budak Derya and Veysel Kerimoglu; Turkish security sources told Middle East Eye the pair had worked as Mossad assets since at least 2012 12. The two allegedly ran shell companies surveilling Palestinian targets and were building an Asian intermediary supply chain scheme that Turkish security sources told Middle East Eye resembled the 2024 Hezbollah pager operation 2. The Levant Files reports MIT has framed "Monitum" within a multi-year "Operation Falling Lion" campaign, deliberately publicizing alleged Mossad arrests in open courts since 2021 1.

Analysis
Turkey's open-court prosecution doctrine locks Ankara into continued counterintelligence operations, since retreating would require publicly abandoning its own declared precedent. Israel faces symmetric pressure to keep naming Hamas command structures in Istanbul to sustain diplomatic leverage. Each mutual exposure cycle degrades both sides' capacity to rebuild networks under commercial cover, making another publicly acknowledged espionage incident likely within the next six months. Confidence is low: sourcing sits in a single cluster of Turkish security and judicial sources with prosecutorial interest in the claims, with no Israeli, signals, or Western corroboration available. Operation Falling Lion framing may be calibrated primarily to project MIT capability to domestic audiences rather than reflect the actual scope of disrupted Mossad activity, a reading that leaves back-channel stabilization more viable than the public posture suggests.

2 sources

The Shadow War on the Bosphorus: Inside the Escalating Intelligence Battle Between Israel and Turkey - The Levant Files
Turkey links Israeli spy cell to pager attack-style supply chain infiltration - Middle East Eye