ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish authorities detained seven people suspected of selling information to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service in connection with tracking and monitoring local targets, a Turkish security official said on Friday.
Turkey has previously warned Israel of “serious consequences” if it tries to hunt down members of the militant Palestinian group Hamas living outside Palestinian territories, including in Turkey. Turkish and Israeli leaders have traded public barbs since Israel’s war with Hamas began last October.
Turkey, unlike most of its Western allies and some Arab nations, does not classify Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkish police and the country’s MIT intelligence agency had conducted joint operations in Istanbul and Izmir as part of an investigation by the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office.
The latest operations come a month after a round of suspected Mossad-related arrests in Turkey.
State broadcaster TRT reported on Friday that MIT had determined that Mossad was using private detectives to follow its targets.
The suspects are believed to have sought to monitor and photograph the targets, place tracking devices on them and gain other information for Mossad, TRT said, citing unnamed security sources.
Ankara has made no formal statement regarding arrests. An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.
Last month, a senior Turkish official said authorities had detained 34 people suspected of being linked to the Mossad service and of targeting Palestinians living in Turkey.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay, Writing by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Gareth Jones)
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