It gathers information for the Presidency and the Armed Forces about the current and potential threats from inside and outside against all the elements that make up Turkey's integrity, constitutional order, existence, independence, security and national power and takes precautions when necessary.
In 2014, it was revealed in the Turkey's Parliament's Internal Affairs Commission that the MİT has units working abroad and was wiretapping the telephones of 2,473 people, mostly related to "terrorism and spying activities.
[27] MIT captured Abdullah Öcalan in Kenya on 15 February 1999, while being transferred from the Greek embassy to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, reportedly with the help of the CIA.
[30] In August 2019, a report was published, which stated that MIT was operating within the capital Tripoli in order to support the Government of National Accord (which is UN recognized).
[42] In April 2019, 4 PKK militants were nabbed at Iraq's Mount Sinjar and were brought to Turkey as part of a joint operation by the MIT and Turkish Armed forces.
[44] In August 2019, 4 PKK militants were killed in an airstrike by Turkish warplane in a joint operation with MIT in the Qandil area of northern Iraq.
[45] In September 2019, 3 PKK militants were killed in an airstrike by Turkish warplane in a joint operation with MIT in the Gara region of northern Iraq.
[46] The same month the MIT in a joint operation, in northern Iraq's Qandil region, with the Turkish Armed Forces neutralized a senior female PKK member together with her driver.
[47] In January 2025, MIT neutralized Islam Dotkanlou, a top figure in the PKK's Iranian branch, along with his bodyguard during an operation carried out in Iraq.
[52] In September 2017, In a Joint operation of MIT, ISI and Punjab Police, A Prominent Turkish Teacher and his family were arrested and brought to Turkey.
[53][54] After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the intelligence services of several NATO countries began operating near the Syria-Turkey border, coordinated by MIT.
[56] In June 2019, a Turkish court sentenced the group of officers and prosecutors who stopped the MIT trucks to at least two decades behind bars for obtaining and disclosing confidential state documents.
[58] The Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet published video footage which it said showed security forces discovering weapons parts being sent to Syria on trucks belonging to MIT.
[61] In October 2014, Press TV journalist Serena Shim was killed when the car she was travelling in collided with a heavy vehicle in Suruç in what are claimed, by her employer and parents, to be suspicious circumstances.
She also claimed that she had received images of ISIL militants crossing the Turkish border into Syria in World Food Programme and NGO trucks.
[62][63][64] On 18 March 2016, Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin sent a letter to the UN Security Council saying that three Turkish humanitarian organizations sent weapons and supplies to extremists in Syria on behalf of MIT.
[65] In a 2018 interview, former Turkish National Police official Ahmet Yayla said that the MIT has used Turkey's IHH as an intermediary to arm Islamist terrorists.
"[70] In 2020, European Union Agency for Asylum reported that a lot of the armed opposition groups in Syria are under the near-total control of MIT and the Turkish Ministry of Defence.
In addition, the Austria's interior minister said that there are indications that Turkey's secret service tried to recruit Austrian citizens and that Europol and the European Council had been informed.
[72] In March 2017 the Turkish secret intelligence service was accused of conducting espionage of more than 300 people and 200 associations and schools linked to supporters of exiled Fethullah Gülen.
[86][87][88] On 30 March 2017 Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere expresses suspicions that the move may have been intended to weigh on Turkish-German relations − "to provoke us in some way".
A spokeswoman for Bundeskriminalamt confirmed the report that the agency met with German MPs "in recent weeks" to discuss "safety" concerns, since "protecting members of the Bundestag is a legal task of the BKA".
[93] In October 2017, according to German press reports officials working in Germany's immigration authorities pass on information about Turkish asylum seekers to Turkey.
The man confessed he had photographed barracks and other military-related buildings on the island for five people he believed were Turkish nationals who paid him up to 1,500 euros ($2,000) for each assignment.
[105] In February 2017, the newspaper Kathimerini reported that the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation recruits EU retirees to spy on a variety of Greek sensitive locations, including military bases, airports and power plants.
[107] In April 2020, a document published by the Gülen-aligned Nordic Monitor, claims that Turkish intelligence was spying on refugees and migrants in Greece in order to find details of those who were persecuted by the Erdogan administration.
[117] According to the Gülen-aligned Stockholm Center for Freedom, an investigation was launched on suspicion of unlawful intelligence gathering and illegal "mapping" against opposition circles in Sweden.
[118] Parliamentarian Alex Kuprecht announced that the government was considering opening a criminal case against regarding espionage and other illegal activities performed by Turkish agents against dissidents.
He applied for political asylum in Ukraine and Turkey issued an Interpol red notice calling for his arrest for the 2002 murder of Turkish academic Necip Hablemitoglu while Bozkir denied any involvement.
[83] In 2018, Turkish NBA player Enes Kanter, who was against Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, informed the New York Knicks he will not be traveling with the team to London because he believed that a trip there would be life-threatening.