The “Guardian” of the New State!..

It was 11 years ago. Following the attempt by “FETÖ” members to arrest then-MIT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan and his deputies, Ömer Çelik, who was the AKP Deputy Chairman responsible for Foreign Affairs at the time, explained the importance and function of the MIT Undersecretary in a television program as follows:

“Your Intelligence Chief has become the eyes and ears of the state regarding Syria. You look at Syria entirely through the information he brings... You have to know everything there street by street... From the moment you turn the MIT into a mechanism that deals with its own internal problems in those very days, you are closing all the eyes of the state that look at Syria, you are closing all its curtains...”

11 years later, it was Fidan, who has been serving as Foreign Minister for 5 months, who announced last Wednesday that the terrorists who carried out the attack on the Ministry of Interior in the heart of Ankara had come from Syria. Fidan did not stop there; he announced the operations and warned “third parties” to stay away from the region.

On the same day, Minister of National Defense Yaşar Güler also repeated these messages from Fidan.

The meaning and significance of that day was that Foreign Minister Fidan, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya, and MIT Chief İbrahim Kalın held a meeting at the Ministry of National Defense with Minister Yaşar Güler and Chief of General Staff General Metin Gürak. The photo provided by this quintet was interpreted as “the state's determination in the fight against terrorism.”

THE SHAMEFUL QUESTION: “DID THE TURKS PROMISE THEY WOULDN'T DO IT AGAIN?”

So much so that a pro-government media outlet ran headlines two days later: “Message on Wednesday, missile on Thursday... A photo of the new doctrine.”

Perhaps because one of the columnists had not heard or chose to ignore that the US had shot down one of our UAVs in Syria that day, they spent a long time decoding the “ciphers” of that meeting and the statements at the Ministry of National Defense, commenting that “the state mind has taken flesh and bone and shown itself with this photo,” while reporting that “a sweeping operation in a sense would be carried out in Syria and Iraq within the framework announced by Hakan Fidan through air operations.”

Another stated that the US, which Fidan warned without naming, “aimed to see whether this rhetoric would be supported by action,” and was “in a sense testing our determination.”

Yet, a day earlier, that “test” had already concluded by the evening hours, it had emerged that the US had shot down one of our UAVs, and Ministry of National Defense sources had immediately announced that the downed UAV “did not belong to the Turkish Armed Forces.”

What followed was hours of silence from the government and its media!..

WHAT IS THE “DECONFLICTION PROTOCOL” THE US MENTIONS?

Only when US Department of Defense (Pentagon) Spokesperson General Pat Ryder stood before reporters and explained almost minute-by-minute how they shot down the UAV did both our media and the authorities have to acknowledge the event. Let us not repeat what Ryder said, but rather convey a question and the answer given regarding a conversation between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Turkish counterpart Yaşar Güler during the attack process.

Journalists asked questions that were shameful for our country, such as: “Did the Turks promise in the phone call that they wouldn't do this again?.. Did they accept that they wouldn't do this again?.. Was the Secretary able to get any guarantee from the Turkish side that these operations would not be repeated in these restricted areas?” While General Ryder settled for saying, “I won't speak for the Turkish minister. Ultimately, I can say it was a very productive conversation for both sides,” he reiterated that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose main structure is formed by the PKK/YPG, are their “local partners.”

In the statement made by the Pentagon regarding the Güler-Austin meeting, striking expressions were used such as: “Strict adherence to communication through established military-to-military channels and deconfliction protocols to reduce tension in Northern Syria.”

The Ministry of National Defense, on the other hand, reported that “the latest developments in Syria were discussed during the meeting” and announced that “Minister Güler expressed that Turkey is ready for a joint fight with the US against DAESH.”

Not only the two Ministers, but US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr. and our Chief of General Staff General Metin Gürak also spoke on the phone. So, what did they discuss?

According to Ankara, “Current developments were discussed during the meeting.”... According to Washington; “The shared goal of defeating ISIS” and “the necessity of adhering to joint deconfliction protocols to ensure the safety of personnel in Syria following today's incident”!..

They shot down our UAV as if declaring war; we are still talking about a “joint fight against DAESH”!..

And also; what are these “deconfliction protocols”? Is it the agreement made after Trump's “I will destroy your economy” threat following the 2019 Operation Peace Spring; the one the US side called a “ceasefire,” while the then-Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said, “It is not a ceasefire, but a pause in the operation”?!

Since everything started with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan's warning, let's look at the attitude of this camp regarding the incident. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which made a statement yesterday, after providing information about the “operations launched by our Armed Forces and Intelligence Organization against the PKK/YPG within the scope of legitimate self-defense” following the terrorist attack in Ankara, noted the following:

“A UAV was lost due to different technical assessments in the deconfliction mechanism operated with third parties during the operation. Necessary measures are being taken to operate the deconfliction mechanism more effectively with the relevant parties. The incident in question has in no way affected the execution of the ongoing operation and the striking of the identified targets.”

How shy, or as one pro-government columnist put it, “as if saying, ‘we are also at fault’,” a statement, isn't it?!

In the evening hours, it was announced that Minister Fidan and his US counterpart Blinken had a phone conversation. While it was reported that Fidan said, “The US must stop working with the terrorist organization YPG,” and that the two ministers also discussed the “NATO enlargement issue,” the US Secretary settled for sharing on his social media account: “We discussed coordinating activities and deconflicting to meet our shared goal of defeating terrorist threats.”

STILL ACTING LIKE THE MIT CHIEF

Here is what we are getting at: who is in charge of cross-border operations? The Ministry of National Defense, to which the TSK, which has completely withdrawn from internal security, is attached, and also the MIT.

Foreign Affairs means “diplomacy.” But we see that Fidan and the Foreign Ministry are in the lead role in both the operations and the downing of our UAV... And that the expressions used are not very suitable for the language of “diplomacy”... Have you ever heard, for example, US Secretaries of State speak by saying, “We carried out such an operation in Afghanistan... We killed Qasem Soleimani in Iraq like this.”?..

This attitude of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Fidan is not the first time. Before this, when YPG members and Arab tribes clashed in Deir ez-Zor at the beginning of September, we heard Fidan say, “[If the portrayal of YPG terrorism as a legitimate force does not end] The clashes we see are just a beginning.”

When Arbat Airport in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq was hit, we witnessed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs making a broad statement as if claiming responsibility for it and warning the Iraqi and Barzani administrations.

It is as if the Foreign Ministry is the spokesperson for the MIT or Fidan's MIT presidency is continuing!..

THE BRITISH INTERPRETATION OF FİDAN

When Erdoğan awarded Fidan with a medal of distinguished service for his duties at the MIT, British Intelligence Chief Richard Moore made a post saying, “Congratulations Mr. Minister, my dear friend Hakan Bey. More than deserved.”

The London-based Middle East Eye (MEE), which focuses on Middle East and North Africa news, has also praised Fidan at every opportunity. Let us quote a few sentences from these praises—from a profile piece on Fidan by MEE Editor-in-Chief David Hearst:

“He is a political scientist who studied under Scottish historian and academic Norman Stone. Despite serving in the military, he is not a military hawk. He is an intellectual, not a thug. He reads books, which is more than can be said for a few recent US presidents.”

“Fidan’s secret is that he sees himself not just as a servant of the state, but as its guardian.”

Following this article, a pro-government columnist commented that “Hearst’s description of Fidan overlaps with Fidan’s national foreign policy description,” and that “there are those who expect Fidan, who restructured TIKA and the MIT, to do the same for Foreign Affairs.”

Later on, another pro-government columnist noted that “Fidan has a transformative quality” and that “it is the turn of the Foreign Ministry.”

Another wrote under the headline “Bozkurt Hakan Fidan”: “I see the ministerial post as a path opened for the presidency in the future. Mastering the secrets of all the world's leaders, serving as Foreign Minister, and becoming the head of state after Mr. Erdoğan would take Turkey to a new era and make us a superpower in the future.”

Now let us return to that much-discussed photo at the Ministry of National Defense. Doesn't the fact that host Minister Yaşar Güler and Chief of General Staff General Metin Gürak, who will act as Commander-in-Chief in case of war according to our Constitution, are sitting on the side, while Hakan Fidan and İbrahim Kalın are sitting in the head seats, look like a photo not of a “new doctrine” but in reality of the “guardian” of the new state?!

In short; the US shooting down our UAV seems to have been handled quietly and calmly. But wait, didn't the US actually kill the soldiers and police officers we lost as martyrs in the Iraq and Syria attacks just yesterday?!

But, unfortunately, there is no one left who can even take a “musical note” into their mouth anymore!..