The Turkish National Intelligence Organization, according to Turkish media, uncovered the role Rexhepi was playing as an Israeli agent through a monitoring operation.
On Tuesday, Turkish security officials announced that they had detained a major financier of Israeli Mossad activities in Istanbul. This development follows a series of other foiled operations and Israeli intelligence rings that had been arrested by Turkiye’s intelligence services since and prior to October 7.
A Kosovan named Liridon Rexhepi has been arrested and identified publicly by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) as being the head of the Israeli Mossad’s financial network in Turkiye.
The MIT, according to Turkish media, uncovered the role Rexhepi was playing as an Israeli agent through a monitoring operation that spotted inconsistencies in his bank account and tracked Western Union payments sent to recruits working on Mossad’s payroll.
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Turkish security forces say that Rexhepi “was transferring money to Mossad’s field agents in Turkiye who filmed Mossad targets with drones, led psychological operations against Palestinian politicians, and gathered intelligence about the Syrian field.”
During his interrogation, he also admitted to transferring funds from Kosovo to Syria, using cryptocurrency.
Previous Arrests
Since October 7, the MIT has arrested at least 20 agents working for the Mossad, while in July a Turkish prosecutor announced he was seeking to impose 20-year jail sentences on some 57 suspects charged with spying for the Mossad.
While the majority of those arrested for working with the Israeli intelligence agency have been Turkish nationals, there have also been many Palestinian and Syrian nationals that have been recruited.
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In August 2022, Ankara re-established diplomatic relations with Israel after relations had been formally severed in 2010. Since that time, Israeli espionage operations have been repeatedly uncovered and appear to be running rampant, especially in Istanbul.
In fact, in January of 2023, Al-Jazeera’s investigative unit even released a documentary that followed the story of one such Mossad ring which was broken up by MIT.
In the Al-Jazeera documentary, it was revealed that the Mossad was targeting Palestinian students, attempting to recruit them in various ways, including using financial compensation and blackmail.
For instance, the Mossad managed to use their contacts at European Embassies to quickly grant their agents visas which would usually be very difficult to obtain for Palestinians and would never be approved instantly.
Prior to the formal arrest of the Mossad’s alleged chief financier Liridon Rexhepi on September 3, one day earlier, it was revealed that seven Mossad field agents had also been taken into custody in a joint operation conducted between the Turkish police and MIT, following a series of raids in Istanbul and the Aegean province of Izmir.
According to Turkiye’s state broadcaster TRT, the Israeli agents had been monitoring, photographing, and placing tracking devices on potential targets that it is assumed Israel could have been looking to assassinate.
Although Ankara has warned Israel of “serious consequences” if it attempts to follow up on the threats made by the Israeli domestic security official, Ronen Bar, that Tel Aviv can assassinate leading Hamas figures in Lebanon, Qatar and Turkiye, there has been no official breakdown in ties as a result of the clear Mossad activities ongoing in the country.
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‘Disrespecting the President’
Throughout the war in Gaza, Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan has publicly condemned Israel and periodically appeared to declare various restrictions on imports and exports between his country and Tel Aviv.
However, Erdogan is yet to formally cut off ties and is faced with great public pressure to shut off the gas exports that it enables to fuel Israel at this time.
In fact, two Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship were arrested a week ago and are set to be deported for “disrespecting the President” after they held up a banner calling on the Turkish leader to cut gas exports to Israel.
At this time, Israel receives the majority of its gas from Azerbaijan, through Turkiye.
If Erdogan cuts diplomatic relations with Israel and shuts off the gas supply to Tel Aviv, this would represent a serious blow to the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, at this time it appears as if Ankara is not willing to take further action against Tel Aviv and is instead waiting out the ongoing genocide, after which it is expected by Western think tanks that relations will be mended between the two sides.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
