By Barçın Yinanç
When a Canadian camera was found in a downed Turkish drone in the war in Nagorno Karabakh, the Canadian government canceled the product’s export permit in April 2021.
“The use of technology in this way is inconsistent with Canada’s foreign policy and Turkey’s end-user commitments,” said the country’s then-foreign minister.
Turkey even used Sweden’s entry to NATO to pressure Canada to revoke its decision. The two allies reached an agreement about the end-user commitments, and the export of the cameras started after the Turkish parliament voted in favor of Stokholm’s entry into NATO in late January 2024.
This was a high priority in otherwise dull Turkish-Canadian relations for the Turkish envoy Esra Demir who started her stint on April 20, 2023. At one stage during her stint, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s plane stopped over on a remote island near Canada. It's alleged that the minister asked questions about the company producing the cameras, and the envoy could not respond. The envoy is set to deny this allegation. But, soon after Fidan left, she was called back to Ankara, becoming one of the shortest-serving ambassadors to Canada.
İlhan Tuğ, the ambassador in Mexico, also failed the test, as he could not answer some of Fidan’s questions. Worse, when Fidan inquired about how he was so fit, Tuğ made the mistake of telling him he played tennis for two hours a day (or five according to urban legend). When he was called back soon after Fidan left, he had served for two years in Mexico.
The question is of course to what degree the non-career ambassadors are subjected to similar “tests,” and whether these political appointees are called back to Ankara if they disappoint the minister. The answer to the first question is not known whereas one can easily speculate about the second; any retribution by Fidan against political appointees is highly unlikely.
‘NOT ALL THE POLITICAL APPOINTEES’
Nevertheless, Fidan is not fond of most of the political appointees. This year’s annual ambassadors meeting in Ankara was closed to ambassadors who were not on active duty. One has to recall that the number of ambassadors (career and non-career included) who are in Ankara without any official duties will very soon approach the total number of ambassadors abroad; quite an anomaly. (Such unemployed ambassadors are jokingly referred to as “EGM” or Ev Genel Müdürü - Household General Director.)
But Fidan cannot do much, as the AKP remains in power thanks to the support of certain religious brotherhoods that would like to see their members in the ministry.
It is for instance not clear whether Turkey’s new envoy to Damascus, Burhan Köroğlu, an academic who studied Islamic Philosophy, was Fidan’s choice or that of the Palace. Köroğlu’s first statement to the Turkish press that “our relations with Syria will be like during the Ottoman period,” contradicted Fidan’s statement that Turkey did not intend to dominate Syria.
By contrast, his most recent pick of Levent Gümrükçü as deputy foreign minister was somewhat surprising since Turkey’s current envoy to NATO is highly regarded by his colleagues as a bright and skillful career diplomat. While Fidan and his core team’s Islamist ideology renders them highly anti-American and Eurosceptic, Gümrükçü is a professional diplomat who has never shown any specific affinity to the AKP power centers.
Perhaps Fidan knows that he needs to work with some of the “old guard” until he completes the “reformat” of the ministry to change the institutions’ approach to foreign policy. He has never hidden that he came to the ministry to change the “mental codes,” of the diplomats. And this means putting “intelligence” in the center stage.
BEDSIDE BOOKS FOR DIPLOMATS
Turkey’s diplomatic missions abroad are frequently asked to report on “current/real-time intelligence,” a practice diplomats are not familiar with.
“We are frequently asked to go out and gather intelligence. But we did not enter the ministry to be spies and we are not trained for that,” complained a young diplomat.
Copies of Kozmik Mesele: Devlet ve İstihbarat Metodolojisine Giriş (The Cosmic Question: An Introduction to State and Intelligence Methodology), first printed in 2020 and written by Gürsel Dönmez, are said to have been distributed by Fidan to all ambassadors. Dönmez, an academic by profession, was recently appointed to Vienna as an ambassador and published another book in June 2024 entitled “Turkey Doctrine in Foreign Policy.”
“The phrase ‘The World is Bigger than Five” takes center stage, and the first section focuses on the general approach of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Hakan Fidan (Fundamentum). The final section presents a framework on implementation (Politikum),” wrote Dönmez in the foreword.
As expected, the new book also focuses on intelligence: “One of the book’s central ideas is this: From a historical perspective, Foreign Policy, International Relations, and Diplomatic Activities are separate categories, but their common structural denominator is intelligence. Intelligence means qualified information,” the foreword says.
As the author confirms part of the book is dedicated to Fidan’s approach to foreign policy, the foreword might harbor some clue to the minister’s mindset. Many suspect Fidan also endorses Islamist ideology while remaining very careful not to show any sign of his deep convictions.
“One of the key objectives of this book can be expressed as an attempt to create a
new position beyond the frameworks of European or American-origin theories and
Institutions,” wrote Dönmez who added that the book aims to be a guide not just to young diplomats but also to all young bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, as Fidan brought along many people from MİT, this has further aggravated the longstanding space shortage. To address the problem, four floors of the Central Bank’s historic building in Ulus have been allocated to the Foreign Ministry since the start of the year. There, only director generals and their deputies have the right to have their own offices while the rest are now asked to work in an open office.
