These are not easy times for Israel. It has been dealt a bad hand of cards on Iran, facing an endless standoff with Hamas in Gaza and continued Hezbollah and Iranian entrenchment on the Syrian Golan. Against the backdrop of the Oct. 22 summit between Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Israel is facing a new development: Reports from Turkey say authorities there cracked a Mossad spy network and arrested 15 of its members.

No one in Israel seems overly bothered by the news, which many sources consider a domestic Palestinian affair. Official Israel is ignoring the reports, according to which the Turkish intelligence service tracked the Mossad ring, consisting of five three-member cells, for a year. On Oct. 7, security agents raided the homes of the 15 alleged agents and arrested them.

The reports coincide with the mysterious disappearance in recent weeks of seven Palestinians studying in Turkey, six men and a woman. “They could well have been detained by Turkish intelligence,” an Israeli intelligence source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “In any case, there is no significant Mossad network, and there was no such network, and this whole affair is not directly connected to us.”

A former senior Mossad official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “Israel is not spying on Turkey, the two countries are not at war and Turkey is not on our list of so-called essential information targets.”