Turkey’s Intelligence Agency Emerges as Erdogan’s Foreign Policy Weapon

On Novem­ber 22, 2024, Eura­sia Review report­ed that Turkey’s Nation­al Intel­li­gence Orga­ni­za­tion (MİT) has trans­formed into a pow­er­ful for­eign pol­i­cy tool under Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan, expand­ing its clan­des­tine oper­a­tions across mul­ti­ple regions. The arti­cle begins:

Turk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy has under­gone fun­da­men­tal change under Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Less under­stood is the rise of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Orga­ni­za­tion (MİT) as a tool of Turk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy. The expand­ed scope and sophis­ti­ca­tion of Turkey’s intel­li­gence and clan­des­tine oper­a­tions have become inte­gral to its for­eign and secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy. This paper exam­ines how clan­des­tine intel­li­gence oper­a­tions have increas­ing­ly become a tool of and reflect Turkey’s evolv­ing geopo­lit­i­cal position…

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Key Points:

1. Under Hakan Fidan’s lead­er­ship, MİT trans­formed from a mil­i­tary-dom­i­nat­ed agency to a civil­ian-led orga­ni­za­tion with expand­ed for­eign oper­a­tions capability.
2. MİT devel­oped para­mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties after the 2016 coup attempt, enabling direct mil­i­tary actions inde­pen­dent of Turkey’s con­ven­tion­al forces.
3. The agency has orches­trat­ed major clan­des­tine oper­a­tions in Syr­ia, Libya, and Azer­bai­jan, using Syr­i­an rebels as prox­ies in region­al conflicts.
4. Recent lead­er­ship changes, with Fidan becom­ing For­eign Min­is­ter and Kalin head­ing MİT, sig­nal con­tin­ued expan­sion of aggres­sive intel­li­gence operations.