Yair Geller, 75, an Israeli businessman who owns an advanced technologies and engineering company in Turkey, CNC İleri Teknoloji, did not know that his residence in Istanbul was long under surveillance by a cell of assassins operated by the Iranian regime. The assassins did not know that they were long under surveillance by MIT, Turkey’s national intelligence agency.

This double cat-and-mouse game went on until the assassins decided that the time was ripe to act and murder Geller. Turkish intelligence, however, decided that the time was ripe to share this information with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. At a meeting in Ankara, MIT and Mossad concluded that the planned assassination of Geller was supposed to be Iran’s retaliation for the November 2020 killing, allegedly by Israel, of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s leading nuclear scientist. Before they could act, nine suspects were detained.

According to Israel’s Channel 12 News, the Mossad has helped foil to 12 plots to carry out terror attacks on Israelis in Turkey over the past two years.

Iran’s covert operations on Turkish soil are not just sorties of the present. Even before the Geller case, the mullahs in Tehran sent were hunting down Iranians in Turkey who opposed the mullahs’ regime in Tehran [see appendix below].

Iran has been continuously accused of supporting radical Islamist organizations and terrorist groups to destabilize and weaken Turkey’s then-secular regime. Turkey’s official establishment has often accused Iran of trying to “export its theocratic regime to Turkey.” Ironically, the Iranians did not need to worry too much about Islamizing Turkey. The Turks could do it themselves.

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In 2002, Turks, by popular vote, brought to power Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, an avowed Islamist, and Iranian subversive activity in Turkey gradually faded away, Erdoğan has since proven invincible at the ballot box, and has successfully implemented a stealth plan to advance political Islam in the only Muslim member of NATO.

Turkey’s Islamist rulers quietly supported Iranian expansionism for several years based on dictum of “the enemy (Iran) of my enemy (Israel) is my friend.”

What, then, revived Iran’s covert operations in Turkey? For Iran, the “good Turkey” was the one in constant bickering with the West and Israel. The “bad” one is the one now claiming to seek reconciliation with Israel, the Gulf states and Egypt. The “bad Turkey” is even proposing to buy Israeli natural gas for its own consumption and transport it to Europe.

Read more: Gatestone Institute