Recent reports in the media about the possible role Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkish intelligence, might play in the Turkish government after the 14 May elections signal plans for the post-Erdoğan era, according to analyst Veysi Sarısözen.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is considering appointing Fidan as his vice-president if he once again declares victory in the coming elections, Turkish media outlets reported this week.
These reports indicate the new plans the powers within the Turkish state have been making, Sarısözen wrote in his column in Özgür Politika on Friday.
“Fidan, with his tremendous ‘archive’ in his pocket and with the relations he has forged with the deep state to date, will be prepared for the post-Erdoğan era,” Sarısözen said.
The intelligence chief’s only weakness is lacking a voter base at the moment, the columnist said, adding that Fidan is the most suitable name for plans for a fascist Turkey with no elections.
According to Sarısözen, Minister of Defence Hulusi Akar will possibly play a role in those plans, as he is Fidan’s closest partner-in-crime.
The duo should be held accountable in relation to a 2016 failed coup attempt, for their efforts in collapsing a peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the ensuing violence against the Kurdish people, and also for dragging Syria into civil war first in cooperation with the United States and then with the Islamic State (ISIS), Sarısözen said.
The Turkish government links all those events to some groups it calls terrorist organisations and embracing this rhetoric will mean strengthening the new plans based on Fidan and Akar, the intellectual said.
“Erdoğan has been going downhill recently; he does not have the energy to maintain war policy. However this duo is still in demand. An opposition that does not openly object to the fake coup attempt, the crimes committed on the pretext of ‘destroying the PKK’ and the invasion of Syrian-Iraq territories, will be unable to counter either state plans to make this duo an alternative, or their efforts to win elections by the use of force,” said Sarısözen.
The only option for the opposition is to deny the state’s rhetoric and to state that it will solve problems through legal, democratic and peaceful methods, according to the columnist.
The only way of blocking this project is to announce beforehand that the Akar-Fidan duo has committed crimes against the country’s military and the state in the form of the coup attempt, and committed war crimes in all parts of the Kurdistan, Sarısözen said, adding that the opposition should also declare that they will put on trial all individuals who took part in those crimes.
“The reports that Fidan is to be appointed as vice-president are a critical sign showing the intention to overcome the contradictions within the state through violence and to win the elections through force. The next two months will witness severe clashes and operations within the state and against the opposition as well as the people’s resistance,” the intellectual concluded.
