Intelligence chief affirms country ‘not playground’ of foreign spies
THE NATIONAL Intelligence Organization (MİT) released a report on its 2023 activities on Friday. In a foreword to the report, the organization’s Director İbrahim Kalın said the agency would not allow the Republic of Türkiye to be “a playground” for foreign espionage activities, pointing out the agency’s latest operation that “deciphered an espionage network of Israel.”
Kalın, who last year took over the chair of MİT from Hakan Fidan, the current foreign minister, said the organization has contributed to many “game-changing steps” for the high interest of the Turkish state, citing operational work in many places, from Syria, Ukraine to Libya and Karabakh. He said that 2023 has been a year of challenges for the world and the scope of national security became increasingly complex in the face of “hybrid and asymmetric” global and regional threats. He stated that MİT constantly changes and improves its combat methods against evolving threats.
“MİT has adopted the hybrid combat method in which all intelligence, analytical and operational capabilities interact against the asymmetric terrorist threat our country faces. The organization sees technology as the multiplier power of intelligence. It benefits from opportunities and capabilities such as human intelligence, signal intelligence, electronic intelligence, cyber intelligence, image intelligence, satellite intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies, big data analysis and artificial intelligence applications.”
He also underlined the importance of the organization’s cooperation with other security agencies of Türkiye, referring to joint operations with police.
Stressing the changing role of MİT, Kalın said that in addition to collecting intelligence on terrorist targets, the organization continued destroying terrorist targets in 2023. He added that the organization focused on capturing or killing senior cadres of the terrorist groups while studying the movement of those groups at the same time. MİT eliminated dozens of names associated with the PKK in particular, in operations in Iraq and Syria last year. Additionally, it coordinated drone strikes abroad to destroy infrastructure critical for the survival of the PKK. MİT also carried out operations for bringing terror suspects to Türkiye from abroad. Kalın said their efforts, especially for deciphering secret activities of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) operating abroad and for the extradition of FETÖ members, made members of this group “understand that they would be under surveillance wherever they are in the world.”
MİT also played a role in the fight against the terrorist group Daesh and Kalın said in his foreword that senior members of the group were captured or killed in MİT operations, including a Daesh leader.
“Developing its capabilities, MİT will provide tactical and operational support in the context of Türkiye’s increasing geopolitical importance and effectiveness,” Kalın concluded.
In recent years, the organization has been instrumental in revealing a string of espionage networks working for different countries, from Iran to China and France. But the highlight of its operations against espionage in 2023 were those against Israeli spies, at a time of heightened Israeli aggression targeting Palestinians in Gaza and apparently, abroad. In April 2023, it foiled a plot by Israel’s Mossad for espionage in Türkiye, by hiring Turkish “private eyes.” After the start of a new round of fighting in the Palestine-Israel conflict on Oct. 7, MİT launched another operation and uncovered a network of operatives working for Mossad and spying on Palestinians in Türkiye.