Prisoner swap, assassination plot bolster Turkey's image as intrigue hotspot
Newly revealed spy rings are reinforcing Istanbul’s long reputation as playground of intelligence agents.
ISTANBUL — A plot to assassinate an Israeli diplomat in Istanbul and a prisoner exchange on a runway of Ankara’s Esenboga Airport marked another week in Turkey, a country of never-ending intrigue and spy plots.
While Turkey’s — and in particular Istanbul’s — reputation as a hub of espionage over the last 100 years mostly dates to its neutrality in World War II, when Allied and Axis agents rubbed shoulders in the restaurants and cafes of the city’s Beyoglu district, spy schemes are never far from today's headlines.
Last weekend the Israeli press reported that the Mossad, the country’s famed foreign intelligence service, had foiled an Iranian plan to kill a diplomat from the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul. A member of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was said to have been arrested in an unspecified European country.
A few days earlier, images of an exchange of prisoners between the United States and Russia on an airport runway evoked Hollywood’s depiction of similar swaps during the Cold War.
