Hakan Fidan: The Shadow Sultan of Turkey

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Another hot and very humid Friday, as is usually the summer days in Istanbul, and everyone waits for sunset after a long summer day in the hope that the temperature will drop even a few degrees in the evening, and then enjoy the Friday night before receiving the weekend, but no one has ever enjoyed this Friday, as it is a hot and long night that lasted every minute of it as if it were a full day, and spoiled everyone to enjoy the usual Saturday and Sunday holiday before returning to work, especially the most important state employee: Hakan Fidan.

While life continues to normal outside the walls of his office, Hakan Fidan, head of Turkish intelligence, sits at noon after receiving news of the intention of a number of officers to carry out a coup the next morning, to decide to meet with a number of senior army leaders at three o'clock in the afternoon to take the necessary measures, procedures that are spread among all officers by six o'clock: any military aviation is strictly prohibited until further notice, and the movement of any military equipment is prohibited from its sites.

The putschists quickly realized that the measures simply mean the exposure of their plan, and their transformation from the plotters of a coup that will be at dawn the next day and everyone is sleeping, to a pole in conflict with those who revealed their plan and now have almost half a day to manage a counter-movement to stop the coup, which is a relatively long period as they saw, to decide that the only way out is to reduce it, and then move early in the evening instead of the dawn of the next day.

I wrote that moment and what followed the fall of the coup with all its steps one after the other, the tanks that had to move at dawn, drew everyone's attention while they were on the Bosphorus Bridge in the evening, and the officers who were entrusted with besieging Erdogan in his hotel in Marmaris had cut off their communication in the afternoon with their leadership according to the plan's dictate, and then they missed all the new news, which reached Erdogan himself after the putschists moved to board his plane and make his famous call via Facetime, a call that took place Only as a result of the failure of the putschists to acquire the headquarters of Turksat, which is responsible for communications.

Decisive hours wrote the victory of the anti-coup movement, followed over the days of the victors' propaganda, as is always the year of politics, Istanbul was decorated with pictures of martyrs who were victims of the confrontation of the putschists, and their heroism appeared in the newspapers, in addition to clear positions in support of the ruling party from figures who have always drawn attention as incompatible with the president, such as Abdullah Gul and Ahmet Davutoglu, and even the opposition poles themselves, secularists and Kurdish nationalists alike.

The man who played the main role in confronting the coup and even revealing it before its due date was sometimes seen as the decisive figure in breaking and revealing the coup, and at other times as a reckless and laggard for not informing the president as soon as he learned of the scheme at noon, and for not discovering the existence of such a huge scheme earlier; Was what happened on the fifteenth of July evidence of his loyalty to the president, or his independence in planning and working alone with the army leadership? Or maybe both?

Hakan: Ambitions Out of Class

Hakan Fidan received his master's thesis in 1999 with a thesis on the role of intelligence in Turkish foreign policy.

The plane is about to take off for the German city of Monchengladbach, where the British Rhineland base is located, which is used by all NATO forces as usual since the days of the Cold War, which just ended. In one of the seats sits Hakan Fidan, a young Turkish non-commissioned officer, excited about his first trip abroad, after years working as a computer technician in the Turkish military's automated data processing unit.

Hakan spent three years in the intelligence department at the headquarters of the NATO Rapid Intervention Forces in Germany, during which he seized the opportunity to obtain a university degree by joining the University of Maryland College, which has branches in several countries to give American officers the opportunity to study while they are in their military missions abroad, years in which Hakan also discovered his passion for political and administrative science, and his incompatibility with the idea of continuing in the military institution.

Hakan returns to Ankara loaded with many ideas, ambitions and experiences that do not suit him at all as a Turkish non-commissioned officer, and then goes on to study a master's degree at the prestigious Bilkent University in parallel with his military work, only to obtain it in 1999 with a thesis on the role of intelligence in Turkish foreign policy, and comparing its then meager foreign role with British and American intelligence, and the lessons learned from these two models.

Hakan has dominated the intelligence and foreign relations worlds since his return from Germany, finally deciding to officially leave the military in 2001 after fifteen years of working there, and going to work as a political and economic adviser to the Australian embassy in Ankara for two years, a period in which he made various trips abroad, and began academic activities with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament, and the Verification Research, Training and Information Center in London.

When Hakan leaves his job at the Australian embassy in 2003, Erdogan, Abdullah Gul and their comrades have come to power, and talk is increasing about a new role for Turkey and dreams of a political return to the east, dreams that Ahmet Davutoglu becomes the first theorist with his studies on the strategic depth of Turkey, who quickly becomes a foreign policy adviser to the new prime minister, despite not receiving media attention. At the same time, Fidan actually gets the same attention from Erdogan, appointing him head of Turkey's Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA).

Fidan finally reaches a station that satisfies him and a seat that accommodates his ambitions about Turkey's external role, to sit on the throne of the institution responsible for Turkey's soft economic and cultural role in the world, which was established in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union, in conjunction with Turkey's desire to pay attention to the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus and strengthen cultural and religious ties between them and their countries, but Fidan quickly takes Tikka further, and brings the activities of the Turks to various parts of the Arab world and Africa.

Over time, it quickly becomes clear that Tika, despite Fidan's successes, is not big enough for his ambitions, nor exactly the right location for his potential: the man who worked in the field of military intelligence is perhaps not the most suitable to be Turkey's soft face after all, despite his interest in its external role, his serious features, and his monotonous nature, perhaps more in line with his assumption of a high-class political and administrative mission as he has always wanted, rather than a diplomatic mission that takes him around the different countries of the world.

Fortunately for him, his new political and administrative mission in 2010, along with the close relationship he enjoys with now Foreign Minister Davutoglu, and the great confidence that Erdogan placed in him, will allow him to implement everything that his hands planned in his master's thesis on restructuring the intelligence service, and crystallizing a clear and effective role for him in foreign policy. For Tikka.

Hakan: Here is Ankara

The man rarely appears or speaks, and his few conversations are not characterized by any vitality or charisma, but he works in silence and discipline, as his colleagues testify to him.

Very bored is the city of Ankara, the Turkish capital, so that the Turks say that the most beautiful thing in it are the highways leading to Istanbul, there is nothing beautiful here except what keeps you away from that gray city as you know, which did not exceed being a small town until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the founders of the republic decided to move the capital to it, and inaugurate all the nascent state institutions there, and then the city grew with the influx of bureaucratic and army employees living in it, a segment of the population that contributed to its monotonous cultural character Capricorn.

Here Hakan Fidan was born and raised, something that his personality clearly reflects: the man rarely appears or speaks, his few conversations are not lively or charismatic, but he works in silence and discipline, as his university colleagues attest to since he was a master's and then doctoral student, something his monotonous language indicates in his two degree theses, compared to Ahmet Davutoglu's more attractive style.

The two men from Ankara and Konya have a close relationship, but the vast distance between the administrative capital and the spiritual capital ultimately reveals a big difference in the natures and political path between Davutoglu, a man of philosophy and academic path who took upon himself a broad vision of Turkey's role in the world according to its location and history, and Fidan, a statesman and intelligence and military path who came up with a detailed plan to redefine intelligence missions as one of the pillars of this role.

From Ankara, where there is almost no history, where geographical isolation from the world's seas and major events, and where institutions that have worked diligently for nearly a century under a strict republican system determined to sever its connection with its history and geographical neighborhood, Fidan came conscious of the need to change much of that legacy, but he never escaped the spirit of Ankara, as it characterizes his vision, studies, personal nature and ambitions, which did not go beyond the limits of his modern city, the legacy of its institutions and the monotony of its employees.

Perhaps the only exception was his three years at the Rhineland base in Germany during the nineties after the end of the Cold War, which drew his attention to the two Western intelligence giants, the United States and Britain, and to the strategies of the major Western countries, the tension between just reunited Germany and Russia, and so on, and perhaps even a little attention to the importance of the big questions regarding geography, history, identity and ideology, a gesture that did not affect Fidan much in the end as much as his daily intelligence work there, as his studies and policies tell us today.

In contrast to Davutoglu, who never left Konya's philosophical legacy, in addition to the questions that Istanbul brought him about culture, identity, the empire's past and dreams of restoring it, Fidan is never passionate about a philosophical question, an Ottoman legacy, or an Islamic identity, all he is concerned with are the questions that the gray city brought him: the future of the state, the complex relationship between intelligence, police, army and authority, and the role of all this in implementing his own vision, a vision that constantly tries to preserve a hair of Muawiya. between her and the Sultan, a task in which he may have succeeded more than Davutoglu.

Hakan: Tug-of-War with the Sultan

Fidan. He is responsible for pivotal issues such as managing the Syrian file, negotiating with the PKK, and purging the state apparatus of Fethullah Gülen's followers.

On February 2015, <>, Fidan decided to turn the Turkish political scene upside down, announcing his resignation from his position at the head of the intelligence service, and his candidacy for parliament on the list of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the June elections, an announcement followed by speculation that he would be appointed by then-Prime Minister Davutoglu as foreign minister.

Despite the different natures and interests between the two men, the relationship between Davutoglu and Fidan has in fact remained close all along, a relationship in which they were united by rationality and a sober academic vision that did not consistently fit with the sultan's sharp and often less rational temperament.

It was not long before the Sultan expressed his indignation at this step, which took place without his knowledge, which would have effectively made the government an independent political pole around which Erdogan's critics rally in the party, which Fidan and Davutoglu wanted to modify the completely dysfunctional balances in favor of the Sultan only, and to reduce the focus of the decision-making process that he tightened his grip on, and not as a kind of counter-movement to exclude him in one way or another in a party in which no one ever thinks of exceeding the legitimacy of the Sultan even if he disagrees. With him some.

Erdogan has openly declared that he does not want to see Fidan, the "keeper of his secrets and state secrets," as he calls him, outside his position in the intelligence service, especially since he is responsible for pivotal files such as managing the Syrian file, negotiating with the PKK, purging the state apparatus of Fethullah Gülen's followers, and restructuring the intelligence and security system, tasks that he does not believe there is more efficient than Fidan to do.

For a whole month, speculation about Fidan remained the main concern of Turkish policy, and questions remained about the reasons for his step, a step that did not seem rational in fact, contrary to the habit of the man, Hakan, who devoted his studies to his vision of restructuring the intelligence and security apparatus in the post-Cold War era to suit a leading role for Turkey, and give it the ability to play multiple military and diplomatic roles in its surroundings, did not pay attention to purely political ambitions like Erdogan, and even did not possess The charisma never enough to hold the position of sultan, and his position as head of intelligence gave him everything he wanted to carry out his plans.

Perhaps he therefore wanted to occupy the role of "Grand Vizier" in the Turkish political system in one way or another, or thought that he would take Davutoglu's seat if the latter left one day to become prime minister, but the Sultan's grip eventually proved its weight, forcing him to return to his original position only one month after that step, and toppling Davutoglu within one year, leaving Fidan alone with his rationality and hard work amid an increasingly crazy political jungle.

Hakan nevertheless remains loyal to Erdogan, and his enmity with Gulen, the worst enemy of the presidential palace currently, but he keeps a distance between him and Erdogan, not for the sake of his political future if things change, but to preserve his visions that he wrote with his hand in Ankara when Erdogan was a mayor in Istanbul capturing the hearts of Turks with his speeches and enthusiasm as an Islamic politician, and he was far from all that Istanbul noise, immersed in books and maps of Turkish institutions surrounding him in the capital.

He is perhaps the most knowledgeable person about the corridors of the Turkish state today, even more than Erdogan himself, which makes him in fact bigger than being a "greater chest" of the Turkish state that the Sultan can get rid of with the stroke of a pen or a conspiracy from inside the palace (or party), the Sultan needs him as he needs the Sultan's blessing to continue in office, a position that enjoys almost absolute powers in which he redraws the features of the state in detail, which are landmarks in which intelligence acquires a central role similar to the role of intelligence. American centralism inside and outside the United States, a model that Fidan aspires to in a world where regular military institutions are clearly as useless as the intelligence and security institutions.

Hakan: The Ghost of Ataturk

Although Fidan is today calculated on a political project that takes Turkey as it is supposed to for the post-Ataturk era, in fact he is probably the only man in that project who carries with him the ghost of Ataturk!

Paradoxically, Fidan today is very similar to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, despite what he changes with his hand and policies from the legacy of the man, and it is a similarity related to his personality, the pace of his work and his political rise, not his thought or vision, Fidan, who comes from Ankara, never understood the world of Istanbul and the role played by Ottoman nostalgia and Islamic emotions in making political figures like Erdogan, just as Mustafa Kemal, the young officer, never understood the rooted legitimacy of the Sultan in Medina despite his weakness, and even his outright madness in Often.

While Istanbul remained irrational on its loyalty to the Ottoman house even as it collapsed on the head of its owners, Mustafa Kemal had unleashed his plans and visions of the new Turkish state, his arrivals and tours in the heart of Anatolia, where people sensed the danger more, and believed in his rational message and hard work, which is beautiful Ataturk's response by robbing Istanbul of its right to be the political center, as if he wanted to keep politics away from that crazy city, and inaugurate the capital in the heart of Anatolia.

After many years, Istanbul continues to give its loyalty to those who caress its Ottoman feelings, and who gives it the dream of restoring its glory even if it falls on its head in the end, and Ankara remains a stronghold of monotony, strict rationality and reticence to possess any uncalculated dreams, and although Fidan is calculated today on a political project that takes Turkey as it is supposed to for the post-Ataturk era, but in fact he is the only man perhaps in that project who carries with him the ghost of Ataturk, and his comrades do not share any feelings of "Istanbulism" to revive its legacy Ottoman or similar as much as he is working on the project of a "new state" in every sense of the word.

Like Ataturk, Fidan is somewhat confined to his office today working on his plans, and he retains the Sultan's blessing for their importance until he finds something new, just as Ataturk did one day, who kept referring to himself as a servant in the Sultan's army, but in fact he kept a great distance between him and Istanbul that allowed him to protect his plan from falling when the latter fell, and even allowed him to eventually sit on the throne of Turkey alone.