Elections always suggest new hopes, new changes and new faces of those who will then generate innovations. During the election campaign, Recep Erdogan promised, in case of his victory, to significantly change the composition of the government, and to send the current ministers as members to parliament.
Erdogan, as it is known, always means what he says. This time as well, immediately after taking the oath and inauguration, the Turkish president announced the new composition of the government. The following three universal features of the new cabinet can be identified:
1) The age bracket of ministers is from 39 to 58 years, that is, a very energetic, young and promising period of productive activity for a politician (in other words, Erdogan may be preparing his replacement from among them).
2) Most of them received higher education in the USA and European countries (in other words, it is a bet on quality education and a government of technocrats composed of Erdogan’s associates, but at the same time a certain orientation to the West).
3) All cabinet ministers have considerable experience of state activity in different areas and in different positions.
It cannot be said that Erdogan has replaced 100% of former heads of departments with new ministers. Thus, Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca and Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy retained their posts in the new government. Apparently, Koca distinguished himself in the conditions of the pandemic and showed a prompt reaction in the situation of the recent devastating earthquake. In turn, the head of the tourism department, obviously, is coping well with the tourist service and the increase in the flow of foreign tourists, which in the conditions of the financial crisis means an important source of revenue for the budget.
However, the purpose of this article does not include evaluating the results of the previous government of Turkey, since President Erdogan and the Turkish society are there to do that. Naturally, in a crisis, the masses demand a change in the government from the leader, which could improve their situation. In this regard, personnel changes in the financial and economic block involve not just replacing one name with another, but relying on some new resources of competent management. In this sector the following appointments should be considered essential:
Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, who previously (since 2020) headed the budget committee in parliament,
Finance Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, who was previously Deputy Minister and in 2016-2018 was in charge of international relations of the Ministry of Finance,
Minister of Finance and Treasury Mehmet Şimşek, in 2009-2015 he already held this post and was Deputy Prime Minister.
Literally immediately after his new appointment, Mehmet Şimşek said on June 4 that the main goal of the ministry would be to achieve macro-financial stability and a gradual reduction in inflation. The way he is going to achieve this, so far is, apparently, clear only to him. In any case, Şimşek focuses on transparency and compliance of the ministry’s course with international standards. It leads to a preliminary conclusion that Erdogan will yield to the pressure of national technocrats and international experts to change the lending and tax rates by way of increasing them. Another forecast of Turkey’s new financial and economic policy may involve transformations in the credit and tax area as an indispensable condition for negotiations with the IMF and other international financial institutions to obtain profitable loans and investments from the West.
In the meantime, the Turkish lira continues to consistently lose ground to the US dollar and has reached the level of 21.1 TL for 1 USD. According to some reports, the experienced professional Şimşek has received guarantees from Erdogan regarding the management of the Central Bank and interest rates.
Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz so far, like Erdogan, is promising to “break the spine of inflation” and restore the affected earthquake zone (and it spans 11 provinces). Although the process of this [spine] breaking and restoration hardly rests with him alone. Regarding the position of vice president, it seems that Erdogan, like in the previous period of his presidency, does not yet attach much political weight and importance to this status. As for the former Vice President Fuat Oktay and the incumbent Cevdet Yilmaz, they are rather a service annex to the institution of the president and perform clerical (organizational) functions. Obviously, in case of a strong president, there is no point in an assertive vice president.
The comprehensive list of new appointments will not be reviewed here. In my opinion, the most important personnel decisions of Erdogan, nevertheless, are the ministers of key departments: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the MIT, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Are there any unexpected changes in this sector? Rather, both yes and no. Naturally, Erdogan pays special attention to issues of foreign policy, defense, security and law and order.
The fact that the ex-governor of the city of Istanbul and the Gaziantep province Ali Yerlikaya became the new Minister of Internal Affairs is definitely not surprising, since:
Firstly, in the course of the election campaign and in view of harsh anti-American statements by the now former Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, Erdogan obviously had to part with such an emotionally destructive minister for reasons of domestic policy and foreign security.
Secondly, the incumbent head of the Interior Ministry (A. Yerlikaya) is another political nominee from among the president’s associates and he knows the situation in Istanbul quite well, where the opposition representative Ekrem Imamoglu remains mayor for the time being (municipal elections will be held in Turkey in 2024).
Thus, by Yerlikaya’s appointment to the Interior Ministry, Erdogan has neutralized the political aggravation and prospects of former Minister S. Soylu, who was included in the list of American sanctions and is banned from entering the United States. Accordingly, this personnel appointment may as well haunt Erdogan’s new communications with Washington.
The appointment of the former Chief of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, General Yaşar Güler, as Minister of Defense also ranks among the expected personnel changes. In fact, the Turkish government has always attached special importance to the institution of the Chief of the General Staff. Previously, this was motivated by the strong ties of the General Staff with the United States and NATO, where almost all key personnel appointments were coordinated with the Americans and until 2016 often (four times) led to military coups at the instruction of Washington. After the failed military coup in July 2016, President Erdogan changed the established personnel tradition and appointed the then incumbent Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar as Minister of Defense.
Yaşar Güler had been the head of the General Staff since 2018. The new change of the head of the General Staff, apparently, is aimed at preventing the strengthening of the position of the chief of the principal military authority of the country. For a strong chief of the General Staff, the position of the political Minister of Defense is, after all, a demotion. In turn, ex-Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, who also distinguished himself with statements unusual for the head of the military department in the field of foreign policy, was made one of the deputies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.
The appointment of former presidential spokesman (press secretary) Ibrahim Kalin as the head of MIT intelligence turned out to be a more unexpected decision. Kalin’s political career is not connected with foreign intelligence agencies. He is a historian, philosopher, Islamic scholar and art historian who studied in Istanbul and Malaysia, passed final defense in the United States at George Washington University, was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ahmet Yasavi Islamic University, lectured at universities in Turkey and the United States, and has the academic title of full professor. His civil service career started in 2009 when he was immediately appointed chief adviser to the Prime Minister on foreign policy. By the way, this is the year of the appointment of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, the developer of the neo-Ottomanism strategy, who also studied at Islamic universities in Malaysia. Since 2018, Kalin has also been acting as Vice President of the Council on Security and Foreign Policy and Chief Adviser to the President of Turkey.
Taking into account Kalin’s education, scientific and state activities, it can be assumed that his task in intelligence will be to continue the Turkic-Islamic synthesis and promote the implementation of neo-Ottomanism and neo-Panturanism of Turkey. Accordingly, the appointment of Ibrahim Kalin to MIT is largely due to the promotion of the now former director of the National Intelligence Organization, Hakan Fidan, to the important political post of Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In my opinion, this decision by Erdogan did not originate yesterday, but ripened much earlier, taking into account his special attitude to the “keeper of his main secrets” Fidan, who had held the position of MIT chief since May 2010. In fact, in the history of republican Turkey, Hakan Fidan became the first intelligence agency chief to receive the post of Foreign Minister. What could this be related to?
Experts often draw parallels between intelligence and the Foreign Ministry, because both departments are foreign-policy centered, have full-time employees abroad, extract information due to their specifics, promote the interests of their own state abroad and create the necessary conditions for this. The whole difference is that the Foreign Ministry is the mouthpiece and performer of public diplomacy, its representatives constantly speak and give interviews, while intelligence acts as secret diplomacy, speaks little and refrains from interviews. However, intelligence information and its specific capabilities for exerting a beneficial impact on the foreign arena, as a rule, far exceed the content of the Foreign Ministry.
Over his 13 years of managing MIT, Hakan Fidan, according to Turkish experts, has achieved significant success and turned Turkish intelligence into an efficient and competitive organization in important regions of the world (from North Africa to the Middle East, and from the South Caucasus to Central Asia). The priority intelligence aspirations and successes of Fidan’s department included countries such as Libya and Syria, Armenia and Ukraine. MIT has largely assisted in the planning of Turkey’s military and political operations in Libya and Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine. Erdogan did not accept Fidan’s resignation in February-March 2015, and did not send him to parliament either in 2015 or in 2023. Consequently, Fidan’s appointment as Foreign Minister with simultaneously sending the now former minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu to parliament pursues far-reaching personnel goals of the Turkish president.
It is obvious that 55-year-old Hakan Fidan has a tempting prospect in modern Turkish politics. One of the visible differences between intelligence and the Foreign Ministry is, of course, the principle of secrecy, which is strictly followed by intelligence officers, and their head remains therefore in the “political shadow” due to the specifics of his agency. At the same time, the position of Foreign Minister allows for a more intensive dialogue with external partners, expanding public contacts and connections in leading and key countries of the world, representing Turkey in the foreign arena and becoming recognizable to allies and partners, as well as adversaries and opponents.
It can be assumed that the Foreign Ministry will become a new place of political formation for Hakan Fidan and, possibly, a springboard to the heights of Turkish power in case of maintaining the favor of Erdogan. However, the activities of Fidan’s predecessor Çavuşoğlu as Foreign Minister should hardly be considered a failure, because, firstly, the president himself is responsible for foreign policy, and the minister only fulfills his will, and, secondly, Erdogan’s Turkey has achieved considerable success on the foreign stage.
Hakan Fidan will continue the policy of strengthening Turkey’s independence within the framework of achieving the strategy of neo-Panturanism and raising its status of a regional superpower. There is also hope for the continuity in expanding partnership with Russia and other major (global and regional) actors (including China and Iran). However, the ex-head of intelligence is also likely to restore effective ties with Turkey’s Western allies and partners (including the United States, Great Britain and EU countries).
So far Hakan Fidan is not vice president, but the Foreign Minister position also promises him new horizons and peaks of power.
Aleksandr SVARANTS, PhD in political science, professor, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
