Targeting Turkey's spy chief

In a first official comment, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay said the focus on Fidan, who heads the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT), is a sign that Turkey is pursuing a “more principled and a more independent policy,” which apparently ruffles some feathers in the United States and Israel.

It is sufficient to read the WSJ profile of Fidan to understand his policy priorities. In brief, the WSJ cited several former and current US and Middle Eastern senior officials who accuse Fidan of transferring classified US intelligence to Iran. In addition, Fidan was also portrayed as an official drafting Turkey's own independent path on Syria without consulting with Ankara's close Western allies. They also blamed him for tolerating radical groups in Syria and claimed that he is the one who is calling the shots in the government.

“If the WSJ is right, if Hakan Fidan is hated by the CIA and Mossad, then there is no reason not to stand behind this son,” one user tweeted on Sunday night, as Turks flooded Twitter to display solidarity with the intelligence chief, a close associate of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “The WSJ is accusing Hakan Fidan of pursuing independent foreign policy for Turkey. What a great sin!” another pro-government user tweeted.

The WSJ profile of Fidan has started to unite the ranks behind Fidan and strengthened claims of a global conspiracy determined to weaken Turkey, a much-hyped remark used by the government and its supporters to demonize the outside world.

Fidan's profile in the WSJ seems to be a deliberate editorial choice, rather than a simple journalistic reporting. But why was Fidan targeted?

Since his advent at the helm of intelligence, Fidan has built a very close relationship with Erdoğan. He is the chief architect and negotiator in the settlement process aimed at ending the decades-old conflict between the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the state. He has also had a very powerful influence in shaping Turkish foreign policy, particularly in the case of protecting Iran from Western pressure in 2010 and 2011.

Fidan is believed to have strong anti-Western sentiments and this makes him an ally of Iran today and a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and Syrian rebels the next day. When he became the intelligence chief in 2010, Israel publicly expressed concerns and feared that Fidan would cause Turkey to drift even closer to Iran. That didn't happen, thanks to the uprising in Syria that pushed Tehran to unconditionally support Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad, Erdoğan's sworn enemy.

When Turkey decided to build an air defense system in 2007, it announced a public tender and finally selected a Chinese firm that is under US sanctions to build the missile defense system. The decision angered the US and NATO, but Ankara defended its “sovereign” decision. Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz said four reasons motivated them to select the Chinese firm: low cost, the possibility of technology transfer, co-production and quick delivery.

Turkey wants to possess the capability to build its own missile defense system so that the US would not share it with Israel.

For decades, NATO has shared military intelligence with Israel. In 2010, Ankara expressed strong opposition to sharing intelligence with Israel that was gathered with radar stations in Turkey's southern province of Malatya. The US didn't bow to Turkey's pressure and said Washington will share the intelligence with Israel.

For this reason, Ankara asked a Franco-Italian consortium and American companies about the possibility of co-production so that Turkey could learn to produce the missile defense system. They rejected the inquiry and Ankara had to choose the Chinese company, which has no restriction on technology transfer and co-production.

This decision rang alarm bells in Western capitals and has become the final straw. Estimating that Fidan is behind Turkey's foreign policy that ignores Western interests, the WSJ targeted him. This was most likely the primary motive behind the Fidan profile in the WSJ.

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