Very little is publicly known about Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister and one its most powerful figures. His career has been marked by secrecy, shaped by his years in the security establishment and his preference for operating away from the spotlight. Step by step, Fidan rose through Turkey’s state apparatus, eventually becoming intelligence chief and then foreign minister. Now, some observers see him as a potential successor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a prospect that has awakened concerns in Israel particularly.
Finding a detailed account of Fidan’s life in either Arabic or English is difficult. Beyond a few sparse lines in his official biography, little is readily available. One unusual exception is a Russian-language book about his career written by two Armenian researchers: Gevorg Minasyan, a retired colonel in Armenia’s National Security Service and a researcher specializing in security and regional affairs, and Angela Simonyan, a researcher specializing in Turkish affairs. They titled the book “Hakan Fidan: Features of a Portrait of a Possible Future President of Turkey.”
It delves into Fidan’s inexorable rise from a childhood in a poor Ankara neighborhood. Growing up in a family whose roots lie in the Kurdish Hasenan tribe, according to the book, from an early age he stood apart from his peers in his behavior and interests. He was a serious child, inclined toward solitude and silence. He was passionate about cinema and, according to his biographers, possessed an “astonishing” photographic memory, as well as an instinctive ability to read between the lines and understand the people around him.
Fidan played soccer in his neighborhood and was often remembered by his peers as a defender, although he would frequently push forward to score. The style was said to mirror his personality: watching from a distance, then seizing the opportunity to score.
In his teenage years, while his friends were passing the ball around the courtyard of their high school, they noticed that Hakan was missing from the field. When they asked about him, they learned that he had left after being accepted into a military noncommissioned officers’ school.
The moment marked a turning point in his life, when he traded childhood and soccer for a military uniform and embarked on a disciplined path that would shape his career in the security services. He gradually rose through the military ranks before becoming deputy undersecretary of Turkey’s intelligence service and, in 2010, its director.
Fidan remained in that highly sensitive position — where many of the country’s secrets and the inner workings of its government converged — for more than 13 years. During that time, he played a central role in some of the most complex issues entrusted to him by Erdogan, foremost among them the Kurdish issue. Beginning in 2009, he was tasked with holding direct talks with representatives of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, drawing in part on his Kurdish background.
That role made Fidan a target for Turkey’s opposition. Opposition newspapers published transcripts of his secret meetings with Kurdish representatives, triggering an uproar over his contacts with an organization designated as terrorist by Turkey and the United States.
In February 2012, Turkish prosecutors summoned Fidan for questioning and surrounded his headquarters. Erdogan intervened to prevent his arrest. According to researcher Mohammed Nour al-Din’s book on Turkey’s coups, Erdogan “secretly removed Fidan from his headquarters” and then pushed through parliament a law requiring the prime minister’s prior approval before Fidan could be investigated. Erdogan was prime minister at the time.
Israel’s Early Concerns
From the moment Fidan took over Turkey’s intelligence service, he raised concerns in Israel. Then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that the new intelligence chief was sympathetic to Iran, saying Turkey “possesses extremely important secrets of ours, and the path we fear is that these intelligence secrets we shared with them could become exposed and available to the Iranians in the coming months.”
Despite Fidan’s reputation as a pragmatist on many issues, Turkish affairs researcher, Yusuf Can, an associate at AMENA Strategies, says Israel is the area in which he appears most clearly hard-line. At an Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in New York in September 2025, Fidan described Israel as a “rogue state blinded by dreams of Greater Israel.” Speaking at Oxford University, he said Israel had become a “direct threat to global security.”
Can argues that Fidan’s rhetoric toward Israel is aimed largely at a domestic audience and the wider Muslim world, while operational policy runs on a parallel track. In practice, he says, Fidan has dealt with Israel pragmatically, including approving a technical deconfliction channel with Israel in Azerbaijan in April 2025, even as he was using increasingly harsh language in public.
In Can’s assessment, despite Israel’s expressed concern over Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister is strategically inclined toward normalization with Israel when it serves Ankara’s vital interests, including its NATO ties and the issue of F-35 fighter jets.
Still, Israel’s security establishment has viewed Fidan with deep suspicion since 2010, following Barak’s warnings. Those concerns were compounded by media reports that Turkish intelligence under Fidan had exposed a network of about 10 Iranians who were secretly meeting Mossad officers inside Turkey. They intensified further after Fidan adopted a sharply critical position toward Israel as foreign minister following the Oct. 7 attacks, meeting with Hamas leaders and freezing trade with Israel.
Yet Can sees Fidan’s more recent moderation in tone as a sign. “The current tension is a temporary phase linked to the current Israeli government and the consequences of the Gaza war, rather than a permanent structural crisis that prevents the rebuilding of relations in the future,” he said.
A Pragmatist Behind the Scenes
Can also considers Fidan more pragmatic than Erdogan on many issues beyond Israel. While the two share a broadly sovereigntist outlook and a desire for Turkey to maintain “strategic autonomy” within NATO, Fidan’s practical approach, Can argues, is rooted in “his quiet intelligence background rather than populist rhetoric.”
That approach is reflected in his record of managing de-escalation channels and keeping lines of communication open — from the talks with the PKK that ultimately led to its dissolution, to maintaining channels with Damascus during Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Fidan has also led normalization efforts with Arab capitals and Israel and mediated between Moscow and Kyiv.
Taken together, those efforts suggest that Fidan’s pragmatic diplomatic actions can go well beyond the sharper tone of his public statements.
A Potential Successor to Erdogan?
While many see Fidan as a potential successor to Erdogan, including the authors of his biography, Can argues that his path to the presidency faces a series of complex political and structural obstacles that have little to do with his Kurdish origins.
The first is that the question of success could remain frozen as long as Erdogan, 72, seeks to extend his tenure through a constitutional amendment or an early election. Fidan would also have to contend with the influence of the president’s family and the possibility that Erdogan’s son, Bilal Erdogan, or his son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar, could emerge as presidential contenders.
Fidan also lacks the party machinery and organizational base, as well as the campaign and mass-speaking experience that political candidates typically need. His background is overwhelmingly rooted in intelligence and technocratic government.
At the same time, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, faces a difficult political environment, and the opposition has been gaining strength in opinion polls. Should Fidan eventually enter the race, Can argues, he could inherit a weakened electoral machine and face fierce competition both inside and outside the party, making a successful bid for the presidency an exceptionally difficult path.
But Fidan, much as he did as a child on the soccer field, may be content to watch from a distance.
And who knows? His opportunity to score the winning goal may yet come.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
