Turkish President Erdogan’s firefighters
With the reshuffle of his cabinet after last month’s election run-off, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has created a very powerful duo with his choice of minister for foreign affairs and intelligence chief. Apart from being close and trusted, Hakan Fidan and Ibrahim Kalin, respectively, are people with strong opinions and backbone who have been able to influence Erdogan significantly, without appearing to overshadow him, while also bringing him back to reality in certain cases. Both have carried out important missions, working mainly in the background, even though they have sat in on most of the meetings Erdogan has held with foreign leaders. Fidan acted as an unofficial national security adviser with expanded responsibilities and Kalin as a foreign affairs adviser, with a knack for tactfully handling sensitive cases and clearly more skill at it than former foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Their new roles point to an attempt by Erdogan to restore the West’s shaken trust in him.
Kalin and Fidan even more so are known to have put out many important fires that were sparked by the president himself, such as in relations with many Gulf monarchies, as well as with Israel and Egypt. The three areas that Fidan, previously head of intelligence, was particularly adept in were security, defense and foreign policy. Kalin, on the other hand, was like a more moderate version of Erdogan in relation to other countries and the West in particular, even though he is deeply conservative and religious. His American education was also an asset.
With the changes he made to the government, Erdogan was obviously looking outside the country, but his focus was mainly domestic as he managed to get rid of two potential suitors, Suleyman Soylu and Hulusi Akar, possibly believing them not to have been as faithful as he would have liked in the final stretch. Another likelihood is that he is preparing the ground for a different successor.
Fidan’s first comments after being appointed to his new role showed him to be a champion of the president’s neo-Ottoman vision
After it was hung out to dry by Erdogan, Fidan’s presence at the helm of the Foreign Ministry will elevate its role and is expected to restore the balance with the Ministry of Defense, which had been upset in recent years, in the latter’s favor. Turkey’s new foreign minister has a more forceful personality than its defense minister, and the new combination appears tighter, more cohesive and with a specific point of view. Having served for more than 13 years as the chief of the intelligence service, he is certainly a pragmatist but may also be a hardliner from his position at Erdogan’s side. His first comments after being appointed to his new role showed him to be a champion of the president’s neo-Ottoman vision, while it is also certain that he will exploit his networks of contacts in areas such as Africa and the Balkans. That said, Fidan understands the complex relationships and rules of the power game, and has adapted to them accordingly. That is why it is important to know his limits, because Turkey always tries to increase the room it has for maneuvering and to change the rules whenever it can.
Meanwhile, the new foreign minister obviously cultivated mechanisms and contacts outside of Turkey while managing so many sensitive cases, and obviously these were, at times, cultivated in a less than legitimate manner. He is thought to have been responsible for the operations of jihadist elements when Turkey was trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, for crushing Kurdish cells inside and outside the country, and for helping establish Turkey’s role in Libya. The recruitment of Islamic fundamentalists as mercenaries in Libya and other parts of the world, as well as the cooperation and competition with paramilitary groups, all bear Fidan’s signature. Over the course of the years, therefore, he will have developed significant know-how in hybrid operations, which is something we need to bear seriously in mind when looking at Turkey’s complicated power games, which also include this country, vis-a-vis for example (though not exclusively so) the issue of minorities.
Constantinos Filis is the director of the Institute of Global Affairs, associate professor at the American College of Greece and an international affairs analyst for Antenna TV.
