Turkey’s spy sat to zoom in on Israeli secrets

Monday, January 2, 2012

Turkey’s spy sat to zoom in on Israeli secrets

Israel’s politicians and military have a new headache to worry about. High resolution photos of the country’s territory, which are currently unavailable to the public, may soon turn up in the hands of any of its many enemies.

Until now, only the Americans had the technology capable of taking satellite images greater than two meters per pixel resolution, and American law stopped US companies from distributing the pictures. Washington shares Israel’s security concerns and abides by the wishes of its key Middle East ally.

This means even with Google Earth one can zoom into Israel only so far, explains Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. “If you try to look at specific parts of Israel, many of them will come out blurrier than any other place in the world that I have checked,” he told RT.

But that is about to change. Turkey is putting the finishing touches to a military satellite it plans to launch within the next two years. The Gokturk satellite will be capable of taking the very pictures Tel Aviv does not want distributed, and there are no American-style legal qualms in Turkey about upsetting its photo-sensitive neighbor.

“Turkey could sell directly or indirectly some of these imageries to enemies of Israel,” explains Mohammed Najib, defense analyst at Jane’s Defense Weekly. Read the rest on: