ISTANBUL — Unlike most of the appointments made in Turkey's new cabinet, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan surprised observers by appointing his senior adviser Ibrahim Kalin, who has an academic background and a busy political and diplomatic career, to head the National Intelligence Service, replacing Hakan Fidan, who took over the foreign affairs portfolio in the new government.

Under the appointment issued on Monday evening, Kalin, known for his love of music and literature and his specialization in philosophy and history, will have to run one of the most important intelligence services in the region and the world.

Although his name appeared alongside some of the names of the new ministers in reports and leaks that preceded the official announcement of the government lineup, his appointment remained surprising, given that he did not have a previous professional career in the security or intelligence corps, which raised questions about the reasons and obligations of this appointment and its implications.

Who is Abraham Qalin?

Commenting on the decision to appoint him to head the National Intelligence Service, Kalin wrote on his Twitter account: "For the sake of my beautiful country, do not stop, we will continue on the road." "I will continue to work for a strong, secure and independent Turkey," he said in a subsequent tweet.

Born in 1971 in Istanbul, Kalin graduated in 1992 in the Department of History at the Faculty of Arts at Istanbul University, and completed his postgraduate studies in Islamic thought and philosophy in Malaysia, and concluded his educational career at George Washington University, which awarded him a doctorate in 2002.

The Turkish academic, who lectured on Islamic thought and Western Islamic relations at a number of universities, the most important of which are Georgetown and Bilkent, founded in 2005 the Endowment for Political, Economic and Social Studies in Ankara, known as SITA. In 2007, he published a book entitled "Islam and the West", for which he won the intellectual prize of the Turkish Writers Union. Later, he published several books in the same framework in addition to philosophy, thought and history.

Güzel ülkem için durmak yok, yola devam... pic.twitter.com/rG16x7g10O

— İbrahim Kalın (@ikalin1) June 5, 2023

Political positions

In 2009, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu introduced him to the government and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to assume his first government post as senior adviser to the prime minister in charge of foreign policy. In 2012, he rose to the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

When Erdogan became president in 2014, Kalin assumed the post of secretary-general of the presidency, later granting him the status of ambassador and appointing him presidential spokesman in 2014.

As of 2018, as the country transitioned from parliamentary to presidential, Kalin served as the president's senior adviser.

As a result of his privileged relationship with Davutoglu, although the latter left the government in 2016 and then turned to the opposition, a number of observers believed that Ibrahim Kalin would follow him, but the latter preferred to stay with President Erdogan.

Engagement in national security

In the last five years he has served as the president's senior adviser, Kalin has been involved in all foreign files with a security dimension as part of his work, which explains, according to analysts, his choice to succeed Hakan Fidan in the National Intelligence Service, as the former enters the shadows, after the latter came into the limelight.

Political analyst and expert in Turkish security affairs, Ahmed Hassan, said that the security projects in which Qalan was introduced are all mainly related to national security arrangements and drawing up a strategy for work in intelligence and other security institutions, considering that these are "security work par excellence."

The security expert believes in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that Kalin fought – which is responsible for all national security meetings with his American, Russian and European counterparts – the most successful Turkish negotiations, he is responsible for maturing security understandings with Russia and the United States, and he also has an important role in the memorandum of understanding concluded with Sweden and Finland.


Non-traditional qualifications

However, the heavy academic background and research and intellectual work produced by Kalin make it justifiable to question the significance of his appointment at the head of Turkish intelligence and his involvement in national security files.

In answering this question, Hassan points out that President Erdoğan returned this appointment to the traditional role of intelligence in the developed world, where think tanks are a key part of the tools of action. Kalin is considered very qualified in this aspect because of his academic record and his specialization in comparing the Eastern and Western mentality and its psychological dimension, and what he wrote before official work was also part of these qualifications.

The analyst and security expert believes that Kalin, according to the above, is not only qualified but is required for this position in the new Turkish policy, which focuses on creating national identity. He adds: "President Erdogan realizes the importance of having a figure with high academic activity at the head of the body responsible for the security of the project of building the new republic in all social, political, economic and other joints."

Overlap between foreign affairs and intelligence

For his part, Turkish journalist Hamza Khader believes that Kalin and Fidan were in constant contact during the previous period, and therefore will continue to coordinate.

Khader pointed out in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that Erdogan has a trend based on a partial merger of the work of both the Foreign Ministry and the intelligence service as a result of the great overlap between their two areas of work.

While he suggested the "continuity" of Hakan Fidan's previous work, the Turkish journalist confirmed the possibility of a change in some files, including the file of normalization with the Syrian regime, for example.

Khader said that the tough tone issued by Kalin compared to former Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu towards the Syrian regime reveals the former's great keenness to achieve Ankara's conditions before proceeding with the path of normalization.

Kalin playing a piece of music on the buzuq at the 2021 concert (Turkish press)

Advantages and priorities

The new Turkish intelligence chief can rely on his previous positions to facilitate his new work, according to Khader, who pointed out that Kalin's position as spokesman for the Turkish presidency has earned him good diplomatic relations that can help him run the work of the intelligence services, which of course are trying to play a diplomatic role and continue to play this role.

The priorities that Kalin will have to deal with in his new position, according to security expert Ahmed Hassan, are "changing the security policy tools in the agency, compensating for the lack in this aspect, and completing Fidan's restructuring."

Hassan expects Kalin to work on academic development at the Academy of Security and Intelligence, as well as developing tools for dealing with citizens, and ending the negative image of the post-failed coup, which, according to the spokesman, will be easy for the new shadow man to achieve given his good reputation in Turkish circles in all its segments.