Turkey's Entente with Israel and Azerbaijan by Alexander Murinson

Author:Alexander Murinson [Murinson, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Middle East, Israel & Palestine, General, Political Science, International Relations, Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781135182434
Google: greLAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-12-04T01:15:43+00:00

In the shadow: intelligence and covert cooperation

By midsummer 1996, multiple examples of cooperation could be cited, all indicative of a secret agenda for Israeli–Turkish accords. A case in point was the super-sensitive issue of the Kurdish rebellion. In this context, the Turks had received intelligence data on Kurdish guerrilla operations within Turkey from those Western countries involved in Operation Provide Comfort as well as from Israel. On the basis of this intelligence, Turkish troops, supported by American-supplied Super Cobra helicopters, engaged the Kurds in a fierce one-week fight at Saqqoze, near the unofficial Kurdish capital, Diyarbakir. The clashes, which ended a four-month PKK ceasefire, reportedly foiled plans for a surprise spring offensive, already finalized by the PKK.

Another example of the depth of Turkish–Israeli cooperation in assessing regional threats was the capture of Mossad agents in the Republic of Cyprus. Israel provided Turkey with intelligence on military developments on Cyprus at this critical juncture.107 The capture of the Israeli agents followed shortly after the shipment of the Russian S-300 missiles to Greek Cyprus in 1997. According to Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to Turkey and later director general of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it was expected that the intelligence “pipeline” contained a lot of information on shared strategic threats for exchange between Turkey and Israel.108 Israeli security services participated in a raid on the Turkish Hizballah cell in 1997.109 Israeli intelligence also assisted Turkey in the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK. Even though Prime Minister Netanyahu flatly denied Israeli involvement in this operation, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit confirmed this report.110 In an act of retaliation, PKK supporters in Germany attempted to assault the Israeli mission in Berlin.111

The majority of Turkish secret service inductees have been recruited from nationalist and pan-Turkist elites. Turkish security services actively forged connections among the Turkist-oriented politicians and intellectuals in Azerbaijan. Turkish External Intelligence (MIT) actively supported political parties with a pan-Turkist orientation even before the independence of Azerbaijan. According to one Armenian analyst, Turkish security services train Azerbaijani Special Forces at the Nasosnaya and Shihovo training camps.112 Israel also has contributed to the training of Azerbaijani security forces, airport security and protection of high political officials.113 In fact, Israel has one of the largest intelligence operations in the CIS states in Azerbaijan. As one measure of Azerbaijain’s diplomatic importance to Israel, the Israeli embassy in Baku employs 200 diplomats.114

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