Turkey becomes ISI’s strategic hub for regional operations

Turkey has emerged as the operational pivot for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence with the two countries’ intelligence services now moving from quiet liaisoning to visible coordination, with multiple real-world cases now pointing to a pattern of cooperation that extends from counter-terrorism tracking to cross-border manhunts.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

The most recent and publicly acknowledged instance came in 2025 when Turkey's National Intelligence Organisation, MIT, and Pakistan's ISI jointly moved against Islamic State operative Ozgiir Altun, also known as Abu Yasir al-Turki. Turkish intelligence had been tracking Altun’s movements through digital surveillance and regional networks and concluded that he was attempting to cross into Pakistan via the Afghanistan route. MIT alerted ISI, which then carried out the on-ground operation near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Altun was arrested and subsequently handed over to Turkish authorities.

Turkish reports explicitly stated that the operation was conducted with the “full support” and cooperation of ISI, marking one of the clearest examples of live coordination between the two agencies.

This was not the first time the two intelligence services were reported to be working together.

An earlier and more politically sensitive case involved Ehsanullah Ehsan, the former spokesperson of the Pakistani Taliban, who mysteriously escaped from a safe house of the Pakistani army in early 2020.