Turkey allowing Hamas to plot attacks on Israelis from its soil – report

British newspaper, citing Israeli police sources, says Ankara’s Islamist government turning blind eye to Hamas officials directing attacks on Israel from Istanbul

By TOI STAFF  

Palestinian supporters of the Hamas movement hold portraits of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as they shout slogans against the military coup attempt in Turkey, during a demonstration in Gaza City, on July 17, 2016. (AFP/MAHMUD HAMS)
Palestinian supporters of the Hamas movement hold portraits of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as they shout slogans against the military coup attempt in Turkey, during a demonstration in Gaza City, on July 17, 2016. (AFP/MAHMUD HAMS)

The authoritarian Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has long played host to leaders of Hamas, is now allowing the terror group’s operatives to plot terror attacks while on Turkish soil, a report said late Tuesday.

According to the British daily The Telegraph, citing Israeli police sources and offering a wealth of details, recent interrogations of terror suspects by Israeli officials revealed that Hamas operations in Jerusalem and the West Bank are being actively directed from Istanbul, while Turkish authorities turn a blind eye.

One such operation cited by the paper was a plot to assassinate senior Israeli officials, including the mayor of Jerusalem and the national police commissioner, by 23-year-old East Jerusalem resident Adham Muselmani, who was recruited to the cause in a meeting in Istanbul.

The report comes shortly after Erdogan hosted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul on Saturday, telling him, “We will keep on supporting our brothers in Palestine.”

Hamas in turn praised Turkey for its “positions vis-a-vis the Palestinian people and its just cause” in a news report on its website.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, left, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meet at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul on December 14, 2019. (Twitter screenshot/Turkish Presidency)

Israel has long complained to Ankara about its ties to Hamas, but to no avail, according to the report. Israeli officials told The Telegraph that Turkey has now reneged on its 2015 commitment, negotiated by the US, not to allow Hamas officials to plot terror attacks against the Jewish state from its territory.

“Israel is extremely concerned that Turkey is allowing Hamas terrorists to operate from its territory, in planning and engaging in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians,” the paper quoted Israel’s Foreign Ministry as saying.

Likud MK Yehudah Glick speaks at the Knesset plenum on May 25, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

According to the paper, Muselmani, who was arrested by the Shin Bet while trying to purchase a pistol, had met with a handler in Istanbul, who suggested he try to kill then Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat, then-MK and Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, or then-police chief Roni Alsheich.

The handler, senior Hamas operative Zacharia Najib, who was released by Israel as part of a 2011 deal that freed IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, offered another person weapons training in Istanbul for an attack in Israel.

The Telegraph also described police transcripts that included a Palestinian imam meeting in Istanbul with Hamas operative Hisham Hijaz in Istanbul, another Shalit deal releasee. Hijaz offered $20,000 in the meeting to the family of anyone who carried out a suicide bombing in Israel.

The paper noted that contacts between Turkish and Hamas officials are ongoing and intimate, with Turkish intelligence agency MIT working closely with the main conduit for the relationship, Hamas official Jihad Ya’amor.

Turkey has long maintained warm ties with Hamas, which have grown more overt as ties with Israel have chilled over the last decade.

Hamas and Erdogan’s AKP party are linked politically. Both have close ideological ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Since coming to power as prime minister in 2003, Erdogan has led a slow but steady realignment of Turkey’s alliances away from its longstanding strategic links to Israel and the West, and asserted a growing leadership role in the Muslim Middle East. It has backed Hamas in intra-Palestinian disputes with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, and funded groups in Jerusalem that have organized violence on and around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Despite tensions with Washington over Turkey’s purchase of Russian arms, Erdogan maintains close ties with US President Donald Trump, whose administration on Tuesday declined to back the Senate’s recognition of the Armenian genocide, in what was seen as a bid to placate Ankara.

A US State Department graphic of a “wanted” poster showing Hamas political bureau deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri, Hezbollah’s former chief liaison to Palestinian terror groups Khalil Yusif Mahmoud Harb, and Hezbollah’s special forces commander in Syria and Yemen, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, upon the announcement of a $5 million reward for information leading to their capture, on November 13, 2018. (US State Department)

Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri, the paper noted, “travels freely to the country without fear of arrest,” despite a $5 million US bounty on his head for terrorism charges. And he’s not alone. At least 11 Hamas figures “who have left [Gaza] in the last year, according to a list compiled by Israeli intelligence and Egyptian border authorities” are known to have relocated to Istanbul.

December 18, 2019 | 2 Comments »

Leave a Reply

2 Comments / 2 Comments

  1. This is the Telegraph report, which is referenced by TOI. The Telegraph claims it uncovered the plot against Barat independently of the Mossad or any Israeli or British intelligence agency. At least, that is what their reporter implies.

    Israeli MP targeted by Hamas’ Istanbul cell calls for sanctions on Turkey
    Raf Sanchez, Middle East correspondent
    A senior Israeli MP has called on the US to impose sanctions on Turkey after an investigation by The Daily Telegraph revealed he had been the target of a Hamas assassination attempt plotted from Istanbul.

    Nir Barkat, the former mayor Jerusalem, was in the sights of an Istanbul-based Hamas cell which operates from Turkey’s largest city while the Turkish government turns a blind eye to its activities.

    In response to the report, Mr Barkat called David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, and urged the Trump administration to begin imposing sanctions on Turkey.

    “If we want to combat terror, which is a global problem, we must never allow any country to get away with providing infrastructure for terror organisations. If any country provides those services – openly or discreetly – they must be sanctioned,” Mr Barakat said in an interview.

    Israel’s foreign ministry also called on Turkey to shut down Hamas’ base in Istanbul in response to the Telegraph report.

    “Hamas terrorists are directing attacks against Israel from Turkey, while the Turkish leadership is turning a blind eye,” said Yuval Rotem, director general of the foreign ministry.

    “Israel calls on Turkey to immediately cut its support for Hamas operations out of its territory and to close Hamas’ headquarters in Istanbul.”

    It also emerged that Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Turkey’s president, met two alleged UK-based Hamas supporters during a trip to Britain for the Nato summit earlier this month.

    Mr Erdo?an addressed a rally of supporters of his Justice & Development Party in London on December 5. At the same event he also met with Anas Altikriti and Zaher Birawi, who are both prominent Islamists in the UK with links to Hamas.

    Israel designated Mr Birawi as a member of a terrorist organisation in 2013 for allegedly being part of Hamas’ European office. Photographs show him sitting with Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas. Mr Birawi could not be reached for comment.

    Mr Erdogan (left) with Mr Altikriti (third from right) and Mr Birawi (second from right)
    Mr Altikriti is the head of the Cordoba Foundation, which David Cameron once described as the “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood” in Britain. Mr Altikriti has voiced support for Hamas in the past, saying it was “fighting back” against Israeli occupation.

    “I support the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom from occupation,” Mr Altikriti said. “Any support for Hamas stems from them being the democratically elected party in 2006. I would have supported and will always support anyone who fights and wins a free and fair democratic election, regardless of faith, culture or ideology.”

    Neither man is on a UK list of designated terrorists.

    Bringing sanctions against its Nato ally Turkey would be a diplomatically fraught move for the US, which has nuclear weapons, aircraft, and service personnel based at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey.

    The Trump administration has so far shown little appetite for sanctioning Turkey, despite pressure in Congress to punish Mr Erdo?an for his attack on Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

    Zacharia Najib, a senior Hamas operative based in Istanbul, suggested Mr Barkat as as an assassination target for a young Hamas recruit who came to Turkey. He told the recruit that he would be remembered if he killed a prominent Israeli.

    Mr Barkat said he had been contacted by Israel’s security services about an assassination attempt and that his personal bodyguard had been tripled until the authorities were confident the plot had been thwarted.

    Mr Barkat was mayor of Jerusalem for ten years and is now a member of parliament for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party. He is talked about as a potential future prime minister after Mr Netanyahu.

  2. Once upon a lifetime ago a small group namely mossad would have spent a weekend in turkey and sent the hamas sodomites home to sit with mohamm in fires of hell. Maybe left a box of cigars and champers compliment of Israel’s a g.