ANKARA — Turkey's top diplomat angrily rejected US newspaper reports alleging the Turkish government leaked Israeli intelligence secrets to Iran. “This is just a smear campaign. This is not true. It is dirty propaganda,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, according to a ministry spokesman. Davutoglu was referring to a column published in the Washington Post on Thursday. Citing “knowledgeable sources,” the Post reported that in early 2012, the Turkish government revealed to Iranian intelligence “the identities of up to 10 Iranians who had been meeting inside Turkey with their Mossad case officers.” The Mossad is Israel's intelligence service. The reported leak took place at a time when relations between Turkey and Israel were at an all-time low, after Israeli commandos killed eight Turks and an American activist during a botched 2010 raid against the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid ship seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Until then, Turkey and Israel had enjoyed decades of close military, intelligence and economic ties. “With the full knowledge of the Turks, we used to use the Turkish soil in order to run intelligence operations,” said Danny Yatom, a retired Israeli major general who spent several years running Mossad. Speaking in a conference call with journalists, Yatom said Israel likely reduced its intelligence-sharing with Turkey after the rupture in relations following the Mavi Marmara raid. But, he added, “this information that was transferred by the Turks to the Iranians about a year ago, this is information that they (the Turks) might acquire from Israel many years ago.” Washington, a close ally of both Turkey and Israel, has sought to smooth over differences between the Middle Eastern countries. Earlier this year, US President Barak Obama helped broker a telephone apology for the Mavi Marmara raid from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his Turkish counterpart. On Thursday, Turkish officials suggested that the Washington Post report was part of a broader effort to discredit Turkey's top spymaster, Hakan Fidan. — Agencies
