On 9th February, Turkish authorities arrested two of the individuals who had been arrested earlier on suspicion of employment by the Israeli spy agency Mossad. The Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) jointly captured Mehmet Budak Derya and Veysel Kerimoğlu, who were already under surveillance and brought them before a criminal court of peace in the Istanbul Courthouse.

The court decided that the suspects should be arrested on the charges of accessing information that is not supposed to be shared for the security or political interests of the state to carry out political or military espionage. It was established that one of the owners of the company, Derya, who had been under MIT surveillance long enough, and his employee, Kerimoglu, were selling information to Mossad. 

Law enforcers discovered that Derya had extended his business operations into the Middle East nations using Kerimoglu, established social and business connections with Palestinians who disapproved of Israeli policies in the territory, and delivered the intelligence they obtained to the Israeli agency.

As it was known, Derya, who has a long-standing relationship with Israeli intelligence since 2013, had been conducting third-country meetings in other European states with many of the agents operating under the codes of the names Luis, Jesus/Jose, Dr Roberto/Ricardo, Dan/Dennis, Mark, Elly/Emmy, and Michael.

By using an encrypted system, investigators ascertained that Derya had communicated with the Israeli service and upon receiving the instructions given by the Mossad operatives, Derya bought SIM cards and internet modem equipment and router devices in Turkiye and some other states and forwarded photos of the labels he had labels on which he had written his passwords, serial numbers, production and MAC addresses to his contacts. 

It was also determined that at the last meeting of Derya with the Mossad officials in January, they were talking about creating a bank account of the front company, creating a web page, creating social media accounts, and researching partner firms.

Derya was also mandated to have an agent company set up overseas in order to penetrate foreign supply chains. As per the purported scheme, the company would liaise with procurement and manufacture of goods in countries to be determined by Mossad and shipment to other countries to be determined by Israeli intelligence, and liaise with three legal businesses that operated in Asia at various levels of the logistics chain. 

After the end of the operation, Derya and Kerimoğlu were arrested in Istanbul on Feb. 6 as part of the “MONITUM Operation” which was organised by MIT, Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Counterterrorism Branch of the Istanbul Police Department.

Over the last few years, Turkish intelligence has identified some spy networks of independent groups, terrorist organisations such as Daesh or external intelligence services in Türkiye.

Turkish security sources claim that Mossad frequently employs online communication software to hire spies to target Palestinians and other foreign citizens residing in Türkiye.