Alike Israel, Turkey aspires to be a cyberspace partner for ME nations
Given the volatile situation of the Middle Eastern region, various small countries are critically affected by Iranian and Russian Cyber attacks however, for few such challenges have been an opportunity to step-up their Cyber abilities. Turkey is one such country.
Turkey has evolved itself into a major sought Cyber power in the Middle East region. It is now becoming a major Cyber power associating with various countries to enhance its own and in providing Cyber capabilities to other countries in the region.
Turkish and Israeli Cyber companies such as Israeli Cyber intelligence firm Cognyte and the Turkish-British Cyber Intelligence company SOCRadar and Logsign represented themselves during an International Cyber Security Days (ICSD) conference in Bakou last November. Various other Israeli cyber experts such as Daniel Zeldis, the head of cyber services at the cyber training firm CyberPro, founded by Gal Genut, an ex-director of operations at the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) intelligence Unit 8200, and Asaf Tamir, the co-founder of the government cyber supplier Cyber Security Group (CSG), headed by IDF intelligence officer Doron Tamir too joined the conference.
The event signified a major development in upgrading the country’s cyber capabilities to keep off Russian Cyber attacks as major strategies and a treaty was signed. As per reports, Turkey and Azerbaijan too were able to chalk out a Cyber cooperation treaty.
According to Azerbaijan’s State agency for Public services and Social innovations (ASAN Service) Turkey is to establish an innovation and technology center in Azerbaijan, the Bilim Baku as per the treaty signed by Ulvi Mehdiyev (Chairman of the state agency).
Unlike Israel which is renowned for its ever-evolving Cyber capabilities, Turkey is not that renowned for the Cyber support it has extended to the other nations. But instances prove that it has been supporting countries in the Cyber domain for a long time now.
In 2017, Turkey proved to be a Cyber rescue partner for Qatar during the time of political crisis. Turkey was the country that helped Qatar in identifying five suspects that were involved in the hacking of Qatar News agency (QNA). Later, there were many mutual agreements signed between both nations to boost Qatar’s cyber capabilities.
Apart from the stated assistance, Turkey is helping the Qatar Nation by providing cyber intelligence amenities to next year’s FIFA World Cup. Officers of the MIT (Turkey’s intelligence service) have been moving to Doha to work on security with their equivalents and interior ministry officials at Qatar’s State Security.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended an unprecedented meeting with the UAE a few months back with national security advisor Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Ankara. The aim was to discuss cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering and analysis. Apart from it, Turkey and UAE also agreed on closing deals in the sphere of Technology inducing Cyber security.
The above-mentioned instances stated that Turkey is not just emerged as a key player in the Cyber warfare domain by providing Cyber assistance to other nations but also Turkey is aspiring to position itself as a powerful country in the Cyber domain capable of not only dealing with its own Cyber challenges but also as a cooperating partner to various other countries in the region like Israel.
