In the Middle East—where the scent of oil mingles with the smoke of gunpowder—the fiercest battles are often fought in the corridors of shadow. These are struggles not measured by artillery or field casualties alone, but by information, covert communication networks, and people recruited and exploited in silence.
In recent years, Turkey has entered this arena with weight and intent, shifting the balance of the intelligence game with “Israel” in the region. Not by proclaiming a fleeting victory, but by demonstrating intelligence capacity and organisational discipline that has redefined the rules of engagement around espionage on its own soil.
The headline of this undeclared war is the operation now known as “Metron”—a takedown of a spy network that Ankara says worked for Israel’s external intelligence agency, the Mossad. Yet “Metron” is not an isolated event; it is a focal point along a longer line of clandestine confrontation between Turkey and “Israel.”
This report dives into the details of this clash—the peak of a protracted struggle between Turkey’s intelligence service and the Mossad—mapping the digital and covert battlefield, and unpacking the messages and implications it carries.
Caught in Turkey’s Intelligence Trap
At dawn on 3 October 2025, Turkish intelligence executed a precision operation codenamed “Metron.” The name sounded odd from the first moment: not a handler, not a city, not even a standard intelligence term. In truth, the codename was itself a signal.
Raids in Istanbul, coordinated with counterterror units and the public prosecutor, targeted a man who, on the surface, seemed an ordinary Turk: Serkan Çiçek. But investigations quickly revealed the name was a mask. He was, in fact, Mehmet Fatih Kılıç, who had changed his identity after debts piled up.
Çiçek worked as a private investigator with contacts in investigative circles. In 2020, he opened a small outfit called Pandora Investigations, handling everyday civil cases and selling monitoring and lookup services to companies and individuals—peddling information in an open market. At some point, the wrong buyer came knocking.
One day he received a tempting proposal from a shadowy account on an encrypted app: a four-day task for $4,000, to be paid in cryptocurrency—an offer that preyed on his financial troubles.
The surprise was the conduit: the Mossad communicated through a fabricated digital identity under the name “Faisal Rashid,” run by an electronic unit inside the agency. But the evidence gathered by Turkish intelligence—digital communications, phone tracing, surveillance footage—pointed to a wider structure.
As the assignment unfolded, Turkish units tracked Çiçek’s movements and calls. When suspicions peaked, simultaneous raids were launched. Tuğrul Han Dib, a well-known Turkish lawyer, was arrested at home. Behind his ordered desk and formal suit lay a side business: trafficking in sensitive data.
Han Dib sold court reports and restricted information to people secretly working with the Mossad, including ordinary Turkish investigators who thought they were assisting research bodies or media outfits. Over time, his leaks became a bridge between Turkey’s interior and Israeli intelligence.
The operation was more than arrests. It was a reversed intelligence play: what began as spying on Turkey flipped into a sting on the Mossad itself. Agents who thought they were slipping into the depths of Istanbul were already moving inside a carefully laid Turkish trap—their messages, transfers, and steps fully under watch.
Turkish sources indicate this network is not a one-off case but an extension of prior cells. Days after “Metron,” authorities announced the arrest of Osman Çelik, accused of sheltering the lawyer Tuğrul Han Dib—evidence that Ankara intended to keep pressing its pursuit.
The true success was not a tally of detainees but the depth of counter-infiltration revealed. Investigations showed the Mossad had shifted from relying on traditional planted agents to recruiting local minds and buying short-term loyalties with money and digital tools.
Palestinians at the Centre of the Game
For years the Mossad maintained a quiet footprint inside Turkey, weaving a complex web of assets and intermediaries that targeted Palestinian figures and political activists opposed to “Israel,” while also monitoring Iranian movements and regional actors that Tel Aviv deems threats.
The task given to Çiçek is telling: he was assigned to surveil a Palestinian activist critical of Israeli policies, living in Istanbul’s Başakşehir district. He tried to downplay the seriousness during interrogation, calling it a routine financial scam, but cross-checked information confirmed an intelligence operation designed to track Palestinian movements—part of a broader plan to penetrate the Palestinian community in Turkey.
Reports further indicate that Çiçek was tasked to gather data on the movements of Zaher Jabarin, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, as part of an Israeli plan to assassinate him after a previous failed attempt that targeted him and members of the negotiating delegation in Doha. The aim: strike at the leadership of the Palestinian resistance on Turkish soil.
Analysts note the Mossad’s activity has risen in Turkey precisely because it is a hub for exiled Palestinians and opponents of Israeli policy—including politicians, activists, academics, refugees, students, and researchers, as well as cadres of Palestinian movements such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
This expanding Palestinian presence pushed Tel Aviv to attempt penetration and close monitoring. Ankara, from Tel Aviv’s vantage point, became an open arena of potential risk. That logic was laid bare when Ronen Bar, head of Israel’s domestic service (Shin Bet), threatened in late 2024 to pursue Hamas leaders everywhere—including inside Turkey—a message of bravado toward Ankara and proof that the intelligence war had spilled past diplomatic lines.
With the eruption of “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the unprecedented regional escalation that followed, Tel Aviv revived extraterritorial assassinations. Ankara responded firmly. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya publicly warned “Israel” against any intelligence activity or assassinations on Turkish soil. Security agencies then tightened measures on the ground—turning warnings into deterrence.
Compared to many Arab states, Turkey remains a relatively safer terrain for Palestinians, providing legal and political cover that enables space for activity. This makes it a staging point for fieldwork and organisational life, but also a prime draw for Israeli intelligence, which sees this active presence as both a worry and an opportunity.
Because many Palestinians in Turkey engage in media, academic, and community activities and keep ties with the West Bank and Gaza, their social and research circles look to the Mossad like mines of information—maps of organisational and political relations, financial channels, and logistical support routes.
For the Mossad, Turkey is also a soft-pressure theatre: targeting a particular Palestinian figure in Turkey can serve as a warning to others, or expose internal links that disrupt organisational coherence.
Thus, Turkey is no longer merely a surveillance field; in Israeli calculations, it has become a strategic centre for managing marginalisation or delivering indirect intelligence blows. The Palestinian presence is not just human or political—it is a sensitive node in the ongoing struggle with Tel Aviv, a standing axis in the hidden confrontation where security, politics, information, and influence intersect.
The Mossad in Turkey: A Silent War Without Bullets
In recent years, “Israel” has built surveillance networks in multiple countries under the cover of private security firms, consultancies, and even universities. Turkey was no exception. Over time, the Mossad kept a low-visibility footprint there, with Palestinians as its primary target set.
Its approach inside Turkey mixes fieldcraft with digital tradecraft, wrapped in seemingly lawful covers like investigation offices or advisory companies—convenient façades for sensitive data collection that draw little suspicion.
Money is never far away. Financial pressure and quick payouts remain potent tools—turning economic need into a recruitment lever, as in Çiçek’s case.
For communications, the Mossad employs virtual identities and fabricated personas (like the “Faisal Rashid” avatar) run from outside the country, issuing instructions through encrypted apps that are difficult to trace—nearly impossible for conventional monitoring.
On the ground, it leans on local intermediaries—lawyers and data brokers—more than foreign agents, creating a veneer of legality for moving or leaking records, as seen in Tuğrul Han Dib’s role pulling from public registries or crafting illicit lookup methods.
Finally, the model often relies on multi-layered networks linking local cells to handlers in Europe and Asia, reducing exposure and ensuring continuity even if parts of the web are rolled up.
Turkey’s operations—most recently “Metron”—broke this rhythm. Ankara didn’t just expose a spy ring; it exposed the method: leveraging Turkey itself as the theatre, and using citizens as unwitting collectors of sensitive information.
What has changed, then, is not only the Mossad’s style—turning big cities into silent arenas for unseen wars—but also the scale of Turkish counter-organisation and visibility. Over the past three years, Turkey’s intelligence carried out five major security operations that revealed the complexity of Israeli activity: from recruiting private investigators to crypto-funded data purchases, especially targeting Palestinians in Turkey.
- Dec 2022: A precision operation targeted a network of private investigators and field operatives tied to the Mossad, who had been selling data through local intermediaries. Seven out of nine suspects were arrested—one of the sharpest strikes to date.
- The following year: Authorities uncovered the “Ghost Cell”—56 individuals across nine networks, each overseen by nine Mossad agents based in Tel Aviv, with capacity for transnational work.
- Dec 2023: Istanbul’s public prosecutor charged 17 people with working for the Mossad, noting plots to kill, abduct, and extort using stolen data—signalling planned targeted assassinations in Turkey.
- Early 2024: A month after foiling an attempted kidnapping of a Palestinian engineer who had contributed to the breach of the “Iron Dome” in 2015–2016, authorities arrested 40+ individuals working for “Israel,” some tied to kidnappings and surveillance of Palestinian activists and their families in Turkey.
- Two months later: Seven people were detained for selling information to the Mossad, including Hamza Turhan Ayberk, former security chief of Istanbul’s Güngören district, dismissed in 2019 for links to Fethullah Gülen’s banned organisation; he leaked data for cash through his PI work.
- September of the same year: Turkey arrested the Mossad’s alleged “mastermind” in Turkey, Liridon Rkshepi, a Kosovar national who ran the network’s financial rails, moving crypto funds to field agents carrying out drone reconnaissance and psychological pressure campaigns against Palestinian figures.
Strategically, Ankara turned these exposures into a multi-layered manoeuvre. Domestically, they raise public morale and demonstrate the state’s ability to protect its sovereignty—even against a famed foreign service. Externally, they impose real costs on Tel Aviv, forcing recalculation before any move in Turkey for fear of scandal and reputational damage. Diplomatically, Ankara converts these wins into leverage in regional and international arenas, signalling that it is not an open field but a state that sets terms.
In the wider horizon, each takedown becomes a symbolic round in a political and strategic contest.
An Intelligence Punch with Political and Security Messages
Analytically, Ankara did not settle for quiet neutralisation, as is common in the intelligence world. It turned the case into a public exhibit—a warning that any hostile activity on its soil will be seen and called out.
Turkey released names, materials, and communication trails linking local agents to their handlers. This visibility is no accident; it is a strategy to shatter surprise, the Mossad’s favourite advantage, and to disorient sleeper networks inside Turkey.
For “Israel,” these public disclosures are a deep embarrassment, puncturing a carefully curated image of infallibility. When secret operations become front-page files, Tel Aviv faces a compound loss: operational, political, and diplomatic.
The timing amplified the message—amid the war on Gaza, expanding regional confrontation, and the surge in cyber-espionage among regional powers. Turkey, once under watch and sometimes a quiet Mossad arena, is now holding the ledger: the age of indulgence toward Israeli incursions is over.
Ankara has gone beyond security exposure to the courtroom: defendants have been charged with espionage and harming national security, giving the confrontation legal and oversight depth. These are not isolated security incidents; they are prosecutable crimes, striking at a pillar of clandestine work.
Turkey has also reminded Tel Aviv that bilateral security and military agreements never grant “Israel” a licence to breach Turkish sovereignty or target residents, especially Palestinians. Agreements in late 2022 allowed the Shin Bet to protect diplomatic missions and cooperate on counter-terrorism, while including a clear commitment by the Mossad not to conduct assassinations or chases of Palestinians inside Turkey—a commitment undercut by field realities.
Every disclosure has thus doubled as deterrent messaging: Turkey’s territory is not open to foreign services who imagine they can operate behind the curtain without consequence. Official statements and press briefings were crafted to carry political meaning alongside the security facts.
Nor are the messages aimed at Tel Aviv alone. Ankara knows the intelligence contest stretches eastward to Iran. In prior years, Turkish intelligence foiled Iranian attempts to target Israelis in Turkey—a sensitive file between the two. Ankara also accused official Iranian staff of involvement in assassinating Iranian dissidents in Turkey, including the arrest of Mohammad Reza Naserzadeh, a staffer at Iran’s Istanbul consulate, suspected in the 2019 killing of opposition figure Masoud Molavi. The point was clear: Turkey would not become a battleground for others’ vendettas—whether Tehran or Tel Aviv.
Western capitals got the message quickly. The operation was not only a blow to “Israel,” it was a notice to all foreign services: Turkey will police its interior space.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has framed these operations with that dual security-political meaning. In remarks marking the 97th anniversary of Turkey’s intelligence service, he underscored that dismantling spy networks embodies state strength and warns adversaries.
In this contest, the goal is not only to catch spies but to weaponise detection itself—to prove Turkey fights a pre-emptive war in the digital domain: tracking suspicious communications and following electronic transfers before they mature into active espionage. No longer waiting for breaches, Ankara aims to abort them early, leaning on data analysis and AI-assisted pattern detection.
This strategy is part of a wider learning loop. Turkey studies Mossad methods in theatres like Iran and Lebanon, where it runs extensive networks, and distils lessons to upgrade both defensive and offensive tools. The quiet war cannot be fought with old means; it requires granular knowledge of the enemy’s architecture and readiness to meet it on every front.
In a striking coda, mere hours after Ankara announced it had dismantled the largest Mossad network on its soil, “Israel” assassinated Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’ deputy political chief, and others in Beirut’s southern suburb. The juxtaposition carried a message: Turkey’s pre-emptive strikes against spy webs are not optional; they are necessary to protect sovereignty and prevent foreign wars from migrating onto Turkish ground.
“Metron” was therefore not a routine security scoop. It was a turning point in the spy war between Ankara and Tel Aviv, a political-security message designed to deter future espionage. Turkey is striking at the heart of “Israel’s” clandestine tools on Turkish soil—dragging a shadow agency into the light of public scrutiny.
Over the long term, relations between Turkey and “Israel” may be re-shaped around rules of intelligence use—or restraint. This hidden struggle could position Ankara as a larger player in regional balance—not only through military or diplomacy, but through intelligence and information.
