The pitiful state of the MOSSAD and Hakan Fidan

When I first heard the claims put forward in successive articles in the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and a great many Israeli newspapers about MİT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, frankly, the possibility that they were true excited me even more.

Especially the latest claim, written by David Ignatus, that Fidan gave Iran the names of, or handed over, 10 Iranian agents operating in Turkey in favor of Israel, although it has been denied by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu himself, would, if true, only show what a state MOSSAD or Israel has been reduced to. The reason such news is published in the American press is in fact clear: to put Turkey in a difficult position. The way to do that is, through the support Obama has given Turkey in the eyes of the American people, to humiliate Obama too in public opinion on this occasion.

Israel has lately been badly disturbed by Obama's overtures toward Iran. Everyone knows that it is doing everything it can to condemn this new rapprochement in public opinion and, if possible, to make it impossible. In fact, the campaign against Hakan Fidan is not only an operation aimed at Turkey; seen from this angle, it is an operation that also targets Obama's Iran policy. But it strikes from such a place that every move it makes beats itself and disgraces it.

If the news were true, the disgrace for Israel would lie in this: MOSSAD operates in Turkey swaggering about, botches it, and all its agents get caught in MİT's surveillance like partridges. Then, instead of lamenting its own incompetence, it ends up bawling and slobbering in the American press, complaining about the beating it took from MİT.

Let's not lie: for Turkey, such news would do nothing other than raise MİT's prestige to the skies.

The MİT under Hakan Fidan probably could not have made such an advertisement even if it paid for one.

Unfortunately, as Davutoğlu also stated, the news is not true. In fact, there is also a barrier of reason, logic and sense against its being true. The foreign policy Turkey is currently pursuing puts it in opposition to Iran on many points; especially because of the Syria and Iraq policies, and even the differences in approach to the PKK, it is impossible that the Iranian and Turkish intelligence services could be working so closely together.

Even so, the fact that these reports were published one after another in a way that reinforces the impression of a campaign already sufficiently explains the nature of the affair. The truth of the matter is Israel's

1. discomfort with the US-Iran rapprochement,

2. discomfort with the Turkish intelligence's recent "headstrong" attitudes from Israel's standpoint,

3. discomfort with Turkey's foreign policy in general.

What this campaign targets is not only the person of Hakan Fidan but, naturally, Obama as the actor of this rapprochement, and Prime Minister Erdoğan, who is the real actor of Turkey's active foreign policy.

The method resorted to in the campaign is nothing but producing evidence from gossip that they themselves invented in the first place but made widespread. A blind fisherman saw the murder, and it is being said in some Tel Aviv cafes that Hakan Fidan handed MOSSAD spies over to Iranian intelligence. In time, what is being said is written down and turns into evidence.

This logic of producing evidence is not foreign to us. It is the same as the logic of the circles that later used in closure cases the fabricated news they published on websites they set up themselves.

Another dimension of the matter, of course, is that MİT is recently going through the most national period in its history and the one most closed to the influence of other intelligence agencies. There were periods when MOSSAD could arrest and interrogate people in Turkey. MİT was an institution that cooperated with it in eliminating politicians or figures who stood up to it, and one that facilitated the coups it supported. Today there is the reality of a distant institution that will not engage in any cooperation with it. MİT has indeed become such an institution, and frankly, as a citizen of this country, in this state it gives me a great sense of confidence. There is no longer a MİT that is a mukhabarat that profiles its own citizens, trails its citizens and codes them as the enemy.

The MİT under Fidan has changed the paradigm of intelligence and begun to work as a real state mind that makes foreign policy analyses and looks after the country's strategic goals. Looking at the attacks on MİT and on the person of Hakan Fidan, this reality comes out in all its clarity.