Hakan Fidan, the man who ran Turkish intelligence with an iron grip for 13 years and now serves as foreign minister, presents Israeli security officials with a genuine strategic puzzle, a former secret partner in critical operations who is also a hardened strategist with close ties to the Iranian axis, according to a profile published by Kikar HaShabbat.
While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to escalate his rhetoric against Israel and the West, the outlet reports that a fierce succession struggle is quietly unfolding beneath the surface, one that could shape the future of the NATO member state. At the center of that drama is Fidan, who Kikar HaShabbat describes as holding the black box of the Turkish regime.
Born in 1968, Fidan ran MIT, Turkey's national intelligence organization, from 2010 to 2023, rebuilding it until it became Erdogan's most powerful intelligence arm, according to the report. As foreign minister, he has continued to operate the ministry as a combined arm of diplomacy and covert activity.
Despite Ankara's sharp anti-Israel rhetoric, the report describes a close intelligence partnership that has persisted between MIT and Israel's Mossad beneath the surface. In the summer of 2022, the two organizations reportedly worked together to foil an extensive Iranian terror infrastructure operating in Istanbul that aimed to assassinate and kidnap Israeli citizens. Fidan and his organization are described as having served for years as the most stable and secretive channel of communication between Jerusalem and Ankara, a channel that reportedly helped manage crises, prevent strategic deterioration, and at times carried messages to and from Hamas. Israeli officials reportedly refer to him as the most dangerous man in the region, given his considerable sophistication and his uncompromising public posture toward Israel.
According to the report, Fidan transformed the foreign ministry into an aggressive arm of Turkish policy after his 2023 appointment. In a recent interview with the state news agency Anadolu, he said that Israel may seek to define Turkey as a new rival after Iran, since Israel cannot sustain itself without an enemy. He has separately escalated his tone in other venues, telling CNN Turk that Israel has become a problem for the entire international community and that Israeli authorities have become a burden humanity can no longer bear, while praising Turkey's decision to halt ten billion dollars in trade with Israel overnight.
The succession race around the 72 year old Erdogan is, according to the report, gripping Turkey. While Erdogan is said to be seeking to establish a political dynasty through his son Bilal or his son in law, drone manufacturer Selcuk Bayraktar, Fidan is seen as the most experienced and professionally credentialed claimant to eventual power.
But that same professional standing is also his greatest political liability, as someone who holds sensitive files on senior regime figures and the Erdogan family, he represents a direct threat to their future security. Analysts cited in the report widely believe that before leaving the political stage, Erdogan may seek to remove Fidan from the political map to secure his family's future, potentially through a sudden appointment to a prestigious diplomatic post abroad or some other arrangement designed to distance him from power.
The report frames Fidan's ties to the Iranian axis as adding a further layer of complexity, on one hand a partner in thwarting Iranian terror plots against Israel, on the other a hardened strategist maintaining ties with Tehran, a duality that makes him an unpredictable figure capable of steering Turkey in sharply different directions.
