When Türkiye’s new foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, took office this month, he was more or less an unknown to the Turkish population. But that really only applies to the general public: a chief spy shouldn’t exactly be well-known there.
He is discretion personified. For more than ten years, Hakan Fidan has been one of the closest advisors to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As head of the MIT secret service, the 55-year-old political scientist Fidan has been involved in all important foreign policy decisions since 2010 – from the use of drones in the Libyan conflict to mediating in the war between Russia and Ukraine. But Fidan has so far almost always remained silent in public. That will change now. The Sultan’s loyal advisor is now the new foreign minister in the Turkish government.
One of his first sponsors was former President Abdullah Gül, who has since turned his back on Erdogan. Erdogan soon took young Fidan into his confidence and instructed him to prepare peace negotiations with the Kurdish PKK. Fidan himself has Kurdish roots through his father. In 2011 he met with a senior member of the PKK in Oslo. A recording of the conversation was leaked to the public and Fidan was put under pressure. An Istanbul prosecutor summoned him. According to the AKP, the initiative was actually aimed at the then Prime Minister Erdogan, who was to be operated on that day. It is one of those episodes in which the intrigues of Turkish politics are lost in the semi-darkness. The same prosecutor was arrested after the failed 2016 coup attempt as a suspected member of the Gülen movement. MIT has played a central role in the prosecution of suspected Gülenists at home and abroad.
Early in his career, Fidan represented Türkiye at NATO in Germany and at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. When he was promoted intelligence chief in 2010, there was an unusual reaction from Israel. Then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak criticized Fidan’s appointment, claiming that he had taken a pro-Iranian stance in nuclear talks with Iran. The AKP refers to tensions with the Israeli secret service at the time. No sooner was Fidan in office than the war in Syria began. Erdogan hoped to overthrow ruler Bashar al-Assad. Today he is pursuing a rapprochement policy. His new foreign minister is also likely to play an important role in this. During the Syrian civil war, Erdogan saw his chance to influence Middle East politics. He supported the rebels who wanted to overthrow dictator Bashar al-Assad. The Turkish government has been accused of supplying weapons to the Islamists, which it denies. MIT and Fidan are said to have played a central role in this.
Former US ambassador to Türkiye and Iraq James Jeffrey said in 2013 that Fidan was “the face of the new Middle East” – but not necessarily a friend of the US. As the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS) grew stronger, the Americans in Syria chose an ally that Ankara considers an enemy: Kurdish militias like the YPG.
Türkiye sees the fighters as part of the PKK terrorist organization, which is taking armed action against the Turkish state. Erdogan once initiated a peace process – his negotiator: Hakan Fidan – but it failed in 2015. Since then, Ankara has conducted several military operations against Kurdish militias in northern Syria. Fidan was always busy at the briefings on the status of the military offensives.
The Erdogan government is now trying to get closer to Damascus and Assad – and once again Fidan is at the center of events. At the end of April he was in Moscow for a meeting of the defense ministers and intelligence chiefs of Türkiye, Russia, Syria and Iran. Assad ally Putin is mediating on the issue.
Fidan is not only seen as the mastermind in Syria, but also in the conflicts in Libya and the Caucasus, where Türkiye exerts influence. He also played a role in establishing contacts between Türkiye and countries with which relations were frozen, such as some Gulf countries, Egypt and Israel.
The attempted coup in 2016 by parts of the Turkish military was a turning point. Ankara blamed the religious movement of US-based preacher Fethullah Gülen. To this day, it has not been finally clarified when the secret service – and Erdogan – found out about the coup plans. The opposition accuses the government of having known in advance. Fidan stayed away from a parliamentary committee of inquiry. The secret service began removing Gülen supporters from the state apparatus en masse. Not only suspected putschists, but also critics of Erdogan were arrested – at home and abroad. Fidan “kidnapped dozens of people from different countries” and had them taken to Türkiye, where some of them were tortured, the US NGO Freedom House wrote.
Even in Germany, MIT is said to have spied on opponents of the Turkish government. In 2017, Fidan presented the intelligence chief Bruno Kahl with a list of hundreds of alleged Gülen supporters. Instead of extraditing those affected, German authorities warned them. Fidan’s appointment as minister confirms Erdogan’s course, which has shown increasing distancing from the West in recent years. This perspective is also present in Fidan’s biography. As a young man he studied the role of the secret services in foreign policy. In his master’s thesis, he argued that Türkiye should rely on its intelligence services to strengthen its foreign policy. On the other hand, he described the dependence on information from the USA and other NATO countries as a problem.
Türkiye is facing major foreign policy challenges. It must balance its interests better than before between the important economic partner and energy supplier Russia on the one hand and the West on the other. The rapprochement with the Assad regime in Damascus also remains an important issue for Ankara. Because Erdogan needs his approval if he wants to send the Syrian refugees, who are increasingly unpopular in Türkiye, home. One of the most pressing issues is Sweden’s entry into NATO, which Erdogan has so far blocked. A rapprochement between the foreign-politically isolated country and the West depends on this. The broken relations with the EU and the ongoing conflict with neighboring and NATO partner Greece are also major construction sites.
Erdogan and his new foreign minister must solve these problems quickly, especially in view of the desolate economic situation: the country, which is mired in a deep currency crisis, must regain the shattered confidence of investors. The new finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, should see to that. But foreign policy will also play a key role.
All publishing rights and copyrights reserved to MENA Research and Study Center.
