Turkish Intelligence Chief Hakan Fidan Participates in Conference at
CoHE
February 27, 2019 / Ankara
Dr. Hakan Fidan, Head of the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey
(MIT), met with academics at CoHE to give a lecture on regional security
assessment.
Before the conference, he met with CoHE President Prof. Dr. M. A. Yekta
Saraç. The conference entitled “Regional Security Assessment”, which is a
first in the history of higher education, took place at CoHE Conference
Hall.
Ankara Governor Vasip Şahin, CoHE members, OSYM President Prof. Dr. Halis
Aygün, rectors of all Turkish universities, directors and academics working
in the field of political sciences and international relations at
universities attended the conference.
Following President Saraç's speech, MIT Head Hakan Fidan gave a conference
entitled ‘Regional Security Assessment’.
In his speech, Fidan made an overall evaluation of the global developments
and talked about regional security assessment. He touched on the possible
developments in our region and the expected risks for Turkey over the
coming period. Fidan also mentioned the geostrategic and geopolitical
position of Turkey.
“With the influence of technological developments and opportunities, an
international order, in which individuals can threaten the states and
asymmetric conflicts can occur, emerges from the classical competitive
environment in which nation states are in conflict with each other.
Therefore, the developments in different regions and interactions between
crises require our country to fight with asymmetrical threats such as
internal and external threats, perception operations and cyber attacks at
the same time.
Terrorist organizations targeting the stability, independence and integrity
of our country benefit from the authority gap in Syria and Iraq. The
intensive use of terrorist organizations, which try to become a state and
take over the state, as subcontractors, requires a holistic approach to
internal and external threats.
Located in a lively region, Turkey should be aware and be prepared against
political, security, economic and cyber threats that are interwoven. To
this end, it is of great importance to analyze the regional and global
equation well and to predict how the events will be shaped strategically,”
he said.
Fidan also emphasized that they, as the National Intelligence Organization,
closely follows the developments happening in the near and distant regions,
the current and possible areas of threat, the approaches of the actors and
their impacts on Turkey in accordance with the increasing effectiveness of
Turkey in foreign policy.
After the conference, President Saraç presented MIT Head Fidan with Mehmet
Tahir’s three-volume book entitled "Ottoman Authors".
Fidan had a question and answer session with the participants at the end of
the conference.