President Erdoğan’s secret keeper Hakan Fidan is a man whose voice was unknown to many Turks before he became foreign minister.
It will soon become clear whether Sweden’s NATO impasse will be opened.
According to Turkish information The civil service talks between Sweden and Turkey will continue on Wednesday.
Turkey’s new foreign minister is also pulling the strings in the background of the discussions Hakan Fida. He is used to moving behind the scenes of the intelligence world.
When the former head of the intelligence service, who was promoted to foreign minister, made his first public appearance last week, many Turks wanted to hear what his voice sounded like.
Although the face and name were familiar, Fidan, who led the intelligence service MIT, has hardly been in the public eye.
After winning the presidential election Recep Tayyip Erdoğan changed several key ministers, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs got a new host.
The new foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, is already part of Erdoğan’s closest inner circle, and he has been seen on most trips abroad alongside the president.
The tone has changed, but the message is the same
Fidan has already had time to discuss Sweden’s NATO membership with the US and Swedish foreign ministers.
Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has been actively commuting in recent days to promote the ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership.
Fidan talked to his Swedish official brother on the phone Tobias Billström with last week Wednesday. His message after the discussions was like a copy of previous comments: Sweden needs more concrete actions against terrorism.
Billström and Fidan agreed to discuss againas long as the countries’ officials have met this week.
Turkey’s messaging has otherwise had a different tone in recent days than before the elections.
The Turkish ambassador in Stockholm once again disapproved of the support demonstration of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, organized in Stockholm. A Swedish expert on Turkey Paul T. Levin however, reviews for Aftonbladetthat the tone was more conciliatory than before.
The mood may also be affected by the extraordinary trial on terrorist financing that started last week in Sweden. The charges against a man suspected of collecting money for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, were read in court.
The new foreign minister is involved in many things
As the president’s man, Hakan Fidan has carried out many types of operations in his intelligence career. Many of the targets have been people Turkey considers its enemies.
When Foreign Minister Fidan goes on trips, intelligence officer Fidan’s preconceptions may come to the fore again.
In Berlin, for example, one might remember how Fidan revealed that Turkey was engaged in extensive extortion in Germany.
In the year 2017 Fida gave up To the head of the BND, the German intelligence service, extensive material on Turks living in Germany who had been monitored by Turkey. A few Germans had also slipped into the material.
In France, someone could raise suspicions of the Turkish intelligence service for involvement in the murder of three Kurdish activists ten years ago. However, the matter was never clarified.
The Turkish government media has told the intelligence service MIT, which in recent years has kidnapped numerous people from different parts of the world whom Turkey has defined as terrorists. The targets have been Erdoğan’s former ally in particular by Fethullah Gülen following. Gülen is accused of the 2016 coup attempt.
MIT has carried out some of the kidnapping operations in cooperation with local intelligence services, some apparently independently.
Intelligence Service allegedly also interrogated people violently in secret places. For example, a left-wing activist brought from Lebanon to Turkey in 2018 Ayten Öztürk disappeared for six months before the police found him in a meadow on the west side of Ankara. He has told of severe torture and believes he was in the hands of the intelligence service.
President Erdoğan’s messenger
Fidan owes Erdoğan a debt of gratitude. In February 2012, Erdoğan, then prime minister, saved Fidan from a difficult situation when a prosecutor suspected of being a follower of the Gülen movement summoned Fidan for questioning. It is believed that Fidan narrowly escaped arrest.
Even before his appointment as head of the intelligence service, Fidan served as Erdoğan’s messenger during the peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK. The prosecutor wanted to investigate whether the contacts had broken the law and apparently to attack Prime Minister Erdoğan at the same time.
Erdoğan quickly pushed through the law changeaccording to which the prime minister’s permission is required to investigate the actions of intelligence service personnel.
Regardless of what one thinks of Fidan, Turkey now has a foreign minister with a picture of the situation and a seamless relationship with the president.
Turkey is expected to continue its independent foreign policy line, which can be seen, for example, in balancing between Russia and the West in the Ukraine war.
Western relations – for example with NATO – Turkey will continue to weigh according to the benefit to be obtained. This is not expected to change, even if the foreign minister changes.
And in Turkey, the president still makes the final decisions.