All Eyes on These Two Turkish Men: Hakan Fidan v. Ibrahim Kalın
Too many tributes, too many comparisons, too many convenient stories about Turkey's FM Fidan and spy chief Kalın. Therefore, I believe, several dynamics converge here.
I do not know how many times each of them has been described as the ultimate keeper of Erdoğan’s secrets, or, as Erdoğan once put it, “the secrets of Turkey.”
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and intelligence chief İbrahim Kalın have emerged as the two most scrutinised figures in the Erdoğan government.
Both operate at the intersection of diplomacy and intelligence, shaping policy across the Middle East while drawing close attention from foreign capitals, particularly from Israel, where assessments of their roles now double as readings of Turkey’s future power structure.
Both have become the subjects of competing narratives that reveal as much about the calculations of foreign governments, especially Israel’s, as they do about Turkey’s internal rivalries
Reports have long circulated since the early 2010s that Israel’s intelligence establishment regarded Turkey’s then-intelligence chief Hakan Fidan as a hardliner. At first, Israeli officials portrayed him as Tehran’s man inside the Turkish government. A few years later, the narrative shifted, depicting him instead as an uncompromising Islamist.
At the time, the religious network led by Fethullah Gülen—later exposed as a criminal organisation embedded within the state and the mastermind of the failed 2016 coup—was targeting Fidan to increase its influence over Turkey’s intelligence service, MİT.
In 2012, a prosecutor affiliated with the Gülen movement summoned Fidan and three other MİT officials to testify for their role in the secret Oslo peace talks with the PKK in 2009, a move that would almost certainly have led to Fidan’s arrest. The timing of the summons was meticulously chosen, coinciding with the period when Erdoğa was undergoing cancer surgery.
Fidan managed to reach him just before he was taken into the operating room and explained the situation, upon which Erdoğan instructed him not to testify. With the president’s backing, Fidan refused to comply, triggering a chain of confrontations between the AKP and Gülenist cadres within the judiciary and police that ultimately culminated in the coup attempt.
According to sources close to MİT at the time, Mossad quietly fed the Gülen network smear information about Fidan and encouraged them to target and detain him. Israeli media figures with intelligence connections made no effort to hide their hostility, often depicting him as anti-Israel.
So it is an open secret that Israel’s political and intelligence establishment does not like Fidan. They never did.
In contrast, the right-wing outlet Ynet recently lauded Erdoğan’s longtime foreign-policy adviser and current intelligence chief İbrahim Kalın as a friend of Israel, even suggesting he could be Erdoğan’s successor. “Just over a year ago,” the article recalled,
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a statement that drew global attention from intelligence and diplomatic circles alike. In Israel, few were surprised when Erdoğan dramatically announced that his closest adviser, İbrahim Kalın, would be his successor. [...] For nine years, Kalın served as Erdoğan’s spokesman, though senior Israeli officials who know him say he was far more than that. Erdoğan trusts him completely—they call him the president’s shadow.”
The same piece noted Kalın’s familiarity with Mossad chief David Barnea, former Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi. It described his cordial relations with Irit Lillian, Israel’s former ambassador to Turkey, whom he often invited to diplomatic forums. One Israeli official was quoted saying, “He really listened to the Israeli side’s assessments.”
Kalın, the report added, recognises Israel as a state and quietly maintains professional contact with Israeli intelligence counterparts. A small anecdote illustrated this proximity: at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, head of the IDF Hostage and Missing Persons Directorate, approached Kalın and greeted him with a warm embrace.
Another Israeli outlet commended Kalın as an influential and multifaceted actor in regional politics—an intellectual, a devout Islamist fluent in English and Arabic, a close confidant of Erdoğan, and an author. It emphasised that Erdoğan entrusted him, now head of MİT, with representing the Erdoğa government’s interests in Gaza during the recent ceasefire talks in Sharm el-Sheikh. The report traced Kalın’s steady rise within Erdoğan’s inner circle from his appointment as public-diplomacy adviser in 2010 to his years as presidential spokesman and finally intelligence chief, interpreting this trajectory as a sign of absolute trust. It also noted that Kalın was the first senior Turkish official to visit Damascus and pray at the Umayyad Mosque after Ahmad al-Sharra’s rise to power, a moment the Israeli press framed as symbolic of the Erdoğan government’s recalibration in Syria. That reading is accurate enough, but it is a side issue for this post.
From an Israeli standpoint, Kalın is viewed as the central conduit in the Erdoğan government’s dealings with Hamas. Unlike his predecessor Fidan, who confronted Israel directly, Kalın was credited for conveying political messages through subtler, media-driven means, using Erdoğan’s propaganda machinery to project intelligence achievements. The most recent case, the article argued, was MİT’s announcement of the arrest of an alleged Mossad agent, timed conspicuously just after the detention of the anti-Israel Somod flotilla. Analysts quoted in the piece concluded that while Israel still sees the Erdoğan government as a key theatre for intelligence activity, the Turkish government employs such operations to underline that Israel cannot act there with impunity.
Within Israel’s right-wing press, Kalın is consistently cast as a conciliator and problem-solver, whereas Fidan appears as a threat along with Erdogan. Yet other commentaries portray Fidan as the pragmatic figure in a post-Erdoğan landscape: “Israel appears to be looking ahead,” one column noted. “While Erdoğan has long been a vehement critic of Israel, his potential successor, former intelligence chief and current Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, is viewed in Israeli security circles as more pragmatic.”
These interpretations coincide with Turkish reports claiming a rift within Erdoğan’s inner circle involving Kalın, Fidan, his son Bilal Erdoğan, and his son-in-law and former finance minister Berat Albayrak, as I have written earlier in this post’s third section on KAAN fighters. They also followed Donald Trump’s remarks at the White House, gesturing toward both men and saying, “I know them. They are too smart. I wish they weren’t as clever.”
Trump’s envoy Steven Witkoff later told a panel that he regularly consults Kalın and Fidan on Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine: “The gentlemen I’m referring to in Türkiye are experts in these areas, and I am encouraged by the Trump administration—this is how it works. For example, I call Tom and ask, ‘What is Ibrahim’s [Kalın] opinion on this issue?’ I could give many similar examples.” He added that these contacts had led to “numerous examples of success.”
Both men—Kalın in particular—have been applauded for their persistence in persuading Hamas to accept Trump’s so-called twenty-point peace plan, which I discussed in a previous post.
Too many tributes, too many comparisons, too many convenient stories for it to be mere coincidence. Therefore, I believe,several dynamics converge in this space.
Kalın and Fidan possess the dual capacity to influence and implicate; both command Erdoğan’s confidence and exercise real authority in the Middle East’s diplomatic circuits and on the ground. Their experience and competence make them indispensable to the Erdoğa government’s regional calculus. Yet their prominence also draws them into competition with other figures orbiting Erdoğan, from crony businessmen to cabinet members, from deputies and advisers to family insiders, each guarding a personal fiefdom.
There are persistent murmurs that the two have clashed more than once. It is said that the latest divergence between Fidan and Kalın concerns the conflict-resolution process between the Turkish state and the PKK. They reportedly differ on both the means and the objectives of the initiative: Fidan is said to prioritise the dismantling of the PKK’s Syrian wing as part of the process, while Kalın favours a gradual, broader approach centred first on the group’s disarmament.
Every few weeks, different kind of reports surface suggesting that either Fidan or Kalın has fallen out of favour with “the family,” implying that one or both may be nearing the end of their tenure. Erdoğan is known to be highly protective of his inner circle and often influenced by his family, mainly his daughters, son, and sons-in-law, whose views carry significant weight in shaping his political judgments. Surely, it is impossible to know the veracity of these rumours about quarrels with the president’s family or the true extent of their relationship with them.
Colourful rumours and comparisons about their academic credentials have also circulated. Fidan holds a PhD but has no published work, while Kalın is a professor with more than ten books, the latest of which is titled ‘Heidegger’in Kulübesine Yolculuk / The Journey to Heidegger’s Cabin’ and several chapters in respected volumes on Turkey and Islamism. The implication, whispered in these circles, is that Kalın possesses greater intellectual depth and sophistication, whereas Fidan relies more on force and tactics than on theory or subtlety.
For Israel’s establishment, highlighting or exaggerating this tension serves a purpose. Suggesting that one is favoured over the other feeds rivalries within Erdoğan’s circle, while speculations about succession unsettle both the president and his ambitious entourage. The pattern of alternating admiration and alarm directed at Fidan and Kalın is unlikely to be accidental. It functions as a form of psychological warfare, designed to sow mistrust and keep the Erdoğan government’s elite off balance.
As is the case with many intelligence services Israeli intelligence and its affiliated media construct reputations as instruments of influence. Depicting Fidan as Tehran’s proxy or Kalın as a dependable interlocutor is, I argue, a way of shaping how power is perceived within the Erdoğan government. Reputational warfare has long been an extension of intelligence competition, waged through narrative rather than operation. Both Kalın and Fidan understand this and may well be using it—exploiting or amplifying it, perhaps with a subtle push through their apparatchiks in Turkish media and on social platforms—to tilt the balance of power to their advantage. That is, after all, part of the job, isn’t it?
The second is the question of succession. Every highly centralised system produces anxiety about what follows the leader, and the Erdoğa government is no exception. Kalın and Fidan’s visibility may reflect their competence, but it also exposes them to scrutiny from within. Their ascent hints at a carefully maintained tension, an order in which rivalry is cultivated to prevent any single figure from emerging as a legitimate heir. It is the same method by which Assad survived amid civil war and catastrophe.
Therefore, this, I mean the rivalry or the rift between these two men may not upset Erdogan, it could, on the contrary come in handy for him. Erdogan has long ruled through calculated insecurity that allowed rivalries to flourish beneath him, maintaining control by ensuring that no deputy or adviser consolidates authority before he himself dictates the line of succession.
The third process signifies the rise and side effects of what could be called intelligence diplomacy. Across the region, intelligence chiefs have replaced foreign ministers as the true brokers of power. Hakan Fidan’s move from the Turkish intelligence service to the Foreign Ministry, Abbas Kamel’s dominance of Egypt’s external affairs through the General Intelligence Service, and David Barnea’s management of Israel’s regional portfolio illustrate this shift. In Qatar, too, the State Security Bureau directs mediation with Hamas and the Taliban more actively than the Foreign Ministry.
Kalın and Fidan, with their access and reach, belong to this fraternity of intermediaries whose negotiations are opaque but decisive. Yet their elevation within this order also renders them rivals on a regional stage where visibility is both currency and liability.
Every public accolade, every profile that exalts one over the other, feeds the quiet contest of proximity to power that defines Erdoğan’s inner circle.
For the time being, all eyes remain fixed on these two men, inside Turkey and beyond, and theirs, in turn, on each other. It must be exhausting.
This was very insightful. Thank you for writing this!
Congratulations for detailed analysis of the agenda