Diplomatic Inside

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the oath of presidency for the third term, announcing his new cabinet last month. Erdogan has hinted at his intent to be less tolerant towards his critics at home, he has also hinted at plans to pursue a security-oriented proactive foreign policy in the MENA region, by appointing Turkey’s spy chief Hakan Fidan as the foreign minister of Turkey and his spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin as the new spy chief. Fidan and Kalin are the most remarkable appointees from among Erdogan’s new cabinet. They are political sons of Turkish Islamist figures who are ardent supporters of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

Fidan who has presided over the National Intelligence Service (MIT) since 2010, transformed the intelligence office by not only introducing the latest technology but also expanding the intuition that grew to be four times bigger during his tenure. Thus MIT played a key role in Turkey’s military operations and diplomatic engagements in Caucuses, Ukraine, Syria and Libya. The AKP pursues a pragmatic foreign policy and Fidan’s main task will be to achieve some sort of political or military victory against neighbouring countries to divert the attention of the masses from the real problems such as the severe economic crises and high inflation rates.

Turkey’s top diplomat Hakan Fidan has, to the Turkish public, remained enshrouded in mystery, over the years he has never given interviews to media houses and the rapid rate at which he rose through his career left the public with many doubts and unanswered questions about him. Fidan served as a non-commissioned officer in the prestigious Turkish Army, from 1986 to 2001. Prior to Fidan, there has been no other example in Turkish bureaucracy of a low-ranking army officer who eventually managed to ascend to the top of a security institution. Fidan worked very closely with the politicians such as former Interior Minister Besir Atalay and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who also served as Erdogan’s top foreign policy adviser and foreign minister. Both Atalay and Davutoglu are known as Iranian sympathisers. Fidan directed the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency from 2003 to 2007 and later worked as a deputy undersecretary to then Prime Minister Erdogan. Erdogan appointed Fidan as Turkey’s governor of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2008 and was later, in 2010 appointed to the position of spy chief. Late Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly accused Fidan of close ties with Iran and many likened Fidan to Iranian General Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in 2020.

Turkey’s new spy chief Ibrahim Kalin who served as the presidential spokesperson and adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from 2014 to 2023, on several different occasions commented that Iran is a very important neighbour for Turkey. Similar to his predecessor Fidan, Kalin is a political son of Ahmet Davutoglu and other Islamist politicians such as Necmettin Erbakan, the former Prime Minister and founder of the neo-Islamist National Order Party and Welfare Party. Kalin obtained his master’s degree from Malaysia International Islamic University where Davutoglu was an associate professor. And between 2006 and 2009, Kalin served as the General Coordinator of SETA, known as the AKP’s think-tank, which was founded by Ahmet Davutoglu. Before becoming a Prime Minister, Davutoglu served as the then Prime Minister Erdoğan’s chief foreign policy advisor for many years and his devotees Fidan and Kalin later assumed similar roles, serving as the Deputy Undersecretary for Foreign Policy and Security at the Prime Ministry and Kalin worked as the foreign policy adviser to the president.

Contrary to Turkey’s Sunni political culture, Davutoglu and his admirers Fidan and Kalin shares a great deal of sympathy for Shia Iran despite differences in Islamic belief among them and the fact that there has ensued a relentless power struggle between the Turks and Persians over the last 1000 years in the region. Prof. Dr Davutoglu, who earned a PhD in political science and international relations, developed the AKP’s “zero problems with neighbours`” foreign policy motto, emphasising the need for Turkey to establish strong ties with Iran. The confidential Turkish police report which was obtained by Nordic Monitor, shows that Fidan was attending religious lectures given privately by Hüseyin Avni Yazıcıoğlu, a convicted militant who had served time in prison for illegal activities on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force in Turkey.  Kalin is known to believe in the Persian Twelver Shi’a Islamic mystic, who led the Iranian cultural renaissance in the 17th century and is one of the most important philosophers of Islam.

The then MIT Chief Fidan, during a leaked recording in 2014 was revealed to have said that “If needed, I would dispatch four men to Syria. [Then] I would have them fire eight mortar shells at the Turkish side and create an excuse for war.”, is now the one attempting to establish peace with the Assad regime. Erdogan’s AKP, however, no longer pursues Davutoglu’s “zero problems with neighbours” policy,  choosing instead, to conduct an expansionist foreign policy with Turkey occupying northern Syrian towns, increasing military presence in Northern Iraq, being involved in conflicts in the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Libya. Whether Kalin and Fidan as key figures in the new cabinet, end up pursuing a peaceful foreign policy or an aggressive one, it would appear that Iran is the biggest winner of Erdogan’s term. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian couldn’t wait to express his joy following the announcement of Fidan’s top job in the foreign ministry. He congratulated Fidan telephonically, before mentioning on Twitter that they had many closed meetings and invited his “brother Hakan Fidan” to Tehran.