Hakan Fidan

Hakan Fidan
Chief of the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey
Assumed office
9 March 2015
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım
Preceded by İsmail Hakkı Musa
In office
25 May 2010 – 10 February 2015
President

Abdullah Gül (2010–2014)

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2014–Present)
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2010–2014) Ahmet Davutoğlu (2014–2015)
Preceded by Emre Taner
Succeeded by İsmail Hakkı Musa
Personal details
Born 1968 (age 48–49)
Ankara, Turkey
Nationality Turkish
Occupation Civil servant (intelligence)

Hakan Fidan (born 1968) is a retired Turkish army sergeant, teacher, diplomat and the Head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization.[1]

Career

After a first degree in management and political sciences at University of Maryland University College he got master's thesis and PhD thesis, both from Bilkent University. He was a non-commissioned officer in the Turkish Army from 1986 to 2001. He was the head of the Turkish Development and Cooperation Agency[2][3] from 2003 to 2007.[4] In November 2007 he was appointed as a deputy-undersecretary in the Prime Ministry.[3][5] From May 2010 to February 2015, he was the undersecretary (i.e. chief) of the National Intelligence Organization (Turkish: Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MİT). On 7 February 2015, he resigned from his position to run for the Turkish Grand National Assembly from the AK Parti.[6] One month later, on 9 March 2015, he withdrew his candidacy and hours later was reappointed to his former job by the Government.[7]

Controversies

In 2009 he was involved in secret peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Oslo, and he was later delegated to hold talks with Abdullah Öcalan and arranged the secret black marketing of Iran through Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government.[8][9]

In 2014, voice recordings, where he, foreign minister Davutoğlu, Deputy Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Yasar Güler, and other military personnel discusses a potential false flag incursion into Syria, was leaked to YouTube and shared across Twitter. The event resulted in the Turkish government blocking access to Twitter, then YouTube, and finally the DNS servers of Google DNS and OpenDNS.[10] In the voice recording, he is heard saying, to a military personnel, "... [i]f legitimacy [of a possible incursion into Syria] is an issue, I can simply send a few men there [across the Syria-Turkey border] and have them launch missiles over to us. Legitimacy is not a problem. Legitimacy can be manufactured." Seymour Hersh later linked what was said in this leaked meeting with CIA–Erdoğan dealings on Syria.[11]

References

  1. ↑ tr:Hakan Fidan
  2. ↑ Today's Zaman, 19 April 2010, Hakan Fidan becomes next head of Turkish intelligence
  3. 1 2 "Hakan Fidan slated to be next head of Turkish intelligence". Dünya. 19 April 2010. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  4. ↑ "Dr Hakan Fidan" (PDF). Yesevi University.
  5. ↑ Vatan, 11 February 2012, Hakan Fidan kimdir? Özgeçmişinde neler var? İşte engenç MİT Başkanı'nın özgeçmişi
  6. ↑ "Turkish spymaster Fidan quits to contest parliamentary election: sources". Reuters. 7 February 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  7. ↑ "Turkey's former intel chief withdraws decision to run for parliament, returns to MİT". Hürriyet Daily News. 9 March 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  8. ↑ Al Jazeera, 22 March 2013, Profile: Turkey's 'secret-keeper' Hakan Fidan
  9. ↑ Hurriyet Daily News, 22 March 2013, Investigation of Turkish Intelligence head won’t proceed, says prosecutor
  10. ↑ Censorship of Twitter#Turkey
  11. ↑ Hersh, Seymour M. (April 6, 2014). "The Red Line and the Rat Line". London Review of Books. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
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