Documents Reveal Turkey’s Secret Intelligence Unit Operating from Dutch Embassy

Turkey has estab­lished a secret intel­li­gence unit inside its embassy in The Hague to gath­er infor­ma­tion on dis­si­dents across Europe. On 27 Novem­ber 2025, Nordic Mon­i­tor report­ed that clas­si­fied doc­u­ments revealed that the embassy cell oper­ates under Ambas­sador Fat­ma Ceren Yaz­gan, a long-time MIT oper­a­tive, and that intel­li­gence is trans­mit­ted to Turk­ish domes­tic secu­ri­ty agen­cies. The arti­cle begins:

The Turk­ish gov­ern­ment has estab­lished and oper­at­ed a clan­des­tine intel­li­gence cell inside its embassy in The Hague to gath­er infor­ma­tion on jour­nal­ists, dis­si­dents and crit­ics of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan through­out Europe, accord­ing to a trove of secret doc­u­ments obtained by Nordic Mon­i­tor. The rev­e­la­tion expos­es yet anoth­er lay­er of Ankara’s increas­ing­ly aggres­sive cam­paign of transna­tion­al repres­sion, one that stretch­es across bor­ders, abus­es diplo­mat­ic immu­ni­ty and weaponizes state insti­tu­tions to silence oppo­nents abroad.

Read more: https://nordicmonitor.com/2025/11/a‑secret-turkish-embassy-unit-in-the-hague-orchestrates-intelligence-operations-across-europe/

SOURCE NOTE: Nordic Mon­i­tor is a spe­cial­ist inves­tiga­tive site that reli­ably sources Turk­ish state doc­u­ments while pre­sent­ing them through an explic­it­ly anti-Erdoğan edi­to­r­i­al lens.

Key Points

• An oper­a­tion run by Colonel Ahmet Murat Karaçam, who arrived on Octo­ber 4, 2024, under the diplo­mat­ic cov­er of a coun­sel­lor, aid­ed by police chief Tun­cay Kızıl­tuğ, who was dis­patched on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024; both believed to have strong links to Turk­ish intel­li­gence struc­tures, specif­i­cal­ly embed­ded to con­duct intel­li­gence activities.
• Ambas­sador Fat­ma Ceren Yaz­gan, a long­time MIT oper­a­tive who pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed the Secu­ri­ty and Research Direc­torate, which served as the for­eign min­istry’s covert intel­li­gence ser­vice, arrived, cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment in which intel­li­gence work was active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed inside the embassy, blur­ring the sep­a­ra­tion between diplo­ma­cy and covert operations.
• A clas­si­fied doc­u­ment dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, shows that Secu­ri­ty Direc­torate Gen­er­al deputy head Barış Özdemir ordered provin­cial police units across Turkey to eval­u­ate and act on intel­li­gence pro­vid­ed by the embassy, stress­ing that the orig­i­nal cov­er let­ter and annex­es must absolute­ly not be shared.
• Nordic Mon­i­tor doc­u­ment­ed sim­i­lar oper­a­tions at Turk­ish embassies in Berlin, Vien­na, Brus­sels, Ottawa, and Wash­ing­ton, reflect­ing a wider glob­al pat­tern of diplo­mat­ic mis­sions being used as oper­a­tional bases for intel­li­gence work tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists, dis­si­dents, and crit­ics abroad.

Turkey’s Intelligence and Influence Operations Target Dissidents Across Europe

Turkey’s Nation­al Intel­li­gence Orga­ni­za­tion (MIT) con­ducts exten­sive covert oper­a­tions across Europe tar­get­ing dis­si­dents, oppo­si­tion groups, and dias­po­ra orga­ni­za­tions crit­i­cal of Ankara. Ger­many’s Fed­er­al Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion accused Turk­ish intel­li­gence of sur­veil­lance net­works and influ­ence cam­paigns that endan­ger pub­lic secu­ri­ty, with intel­li­gence col­lect­ed in Ger­many form­ing the basis for arrests and trav­el bans when indi­vid­u­als return to Turkey. Nordic Mon­i­tor reports that MIT has estab­lished clan­des­tine out­posts under the guise of jour­nal­ism, aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions, and char­i­ties to mon­i­tor crit­ics while manip­u­lat­ing pub­lic opin­ion in host nations.

Reli­gious insti­tu­tions serve as crit­i­cal nodes in the Turk­ish intel­li­gence infra­struc­ture. Ger­many’s Min­istry of Inte­ri­or stat­ed in 2020 that DITIB offers the Turk­ish Intel­li­gence Ser­vice many poten­tial inform­ers, with at least nine­teen DITIB imams doc­u­ment­ed con­duct­ing espi­onage against tar­gets in Ger­many on behalf of Turkey. The 2017 “spy­ing imams” affair trig­gered police raids across Ger­many after evi­dence emerged that Diyanet-deployed cler­ics were gath­er­ing intel­li­gence on Gülen move­ment mem­bers and trans­mit­ting infor­ma­tion to Ankara through diplo­mat­ic channels.

The Union of Inter­na­tion­al Democ­rats (UID) func­tions as Turkey’s pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal influ­ence vehi­cle, iden­ti­fied by Ger­man intel­li­gence as the lead­ing pro-gov­ern­ment lob­by­ing group with con­sid­er­able mobi­liza­tion pow­er. The UID has engaged in over 1,000 joint activ­i­ties with mosques and NGOs, embed­ding polit­i­cal objec­tives with­in reli­gious net­works while mobi­liz­ing dias­po­ra vot­ers dur­ing Turk­ish elec­tions. Ger­man author­i­ties clas­si­fy these intel­li­gence activ­i­ties as transna­tion­al repres­sion, with MIT using diplo­mat­ic per­son­nel, infor­mal col­lab­o­ra­tors, and vol­un­tary infor­mants to col­lect data on critics.

Euro­pean coun­ter­mea­sures have inten­si­fied fol­low­ing doc­u­ment­ed espi­onage cas­es. Accord­ing to the Mid­dle East Forum, reports indi­cate Turkey main­tains approx­i­mate­ly 6,000 infor­mants plus MIT offi­cers in Ger­many, prompt­ing Ger­man secu­ri­ty expert Erich Schmidt-Een­boom to note that not even the for­mer East Ger­man Stasi man­aged such a large net­work. Ger­many has launched inves­ti­ga­tions into Turk­ish con­sulate employ­ees sus­pect­ed of espi­onage, while Nordic Mon­i­tor revealed that a secret intel­li­gence cell inside Turkey’s embassy in The Hague orches­trates oper­a­tions across Europe, with infor­ma­tion direct­ly inte­grat­ed into Turkey’s domes­tic secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus for action against dissidents.

Exter­nal References:
• Ger­many accus­es Turkey of endan­ger­ing pub­lic secu­ri­ty — Nordic Monitor
• Turkey Taps Mas­ter Spy as Next Ambas­sador to Aus­tria — Mid­dle East Forum
• Nation­al Intel­li­gence Orga­ni­za­tion (Turkey) — Wikipedia

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