Allied Intelligence — 2026-07-09

Israeli Report Details MIT Chief Fidan Dual Role as Mossad Partner and Iranian Axis Interlocutor Amid Turkey Succession Struggle

BLUFErdogan's structural incentive to exile Fidan before a succession contest would eliminate the sole functioning back-channel capable of containing Israeli-Turkish crises as public hostility deepens.

A profile in Kikar HaShabbat, relayed by JFeed, reports that Hakan Fidan, who ran Turkey's MIT intelligence service from 2010 to 2023 and now serves as foreign minister, has maintained a covert partnership with Israel's Mossad, at times serving as a secret communication channel between Jerusalem and Ankara and relaying messages to Hamas 12. The two services reportedly disrupted an Iranian terror network in Istanbul in summer 2022 that had been planning to assassinate or kidnap Israeli citizens 12. The report casts Fidan as the most credentialed potential successor to 72-year-old President Erdogan, ahead of Erdogan's son Bilal and son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar, and cites unnamed analysts as believing Erdogan may sideline him with a diplomatic post abroad 12. Fidan has publicly told Anadolu that Israel may cast Turkey as its next adversary and told CNN Turk that Israel has become a burden humanity can no longer bear, while praising Turkey's halt of roughly $10 billion in trade with Israel 12.

Analysis
Fidan's dual role sustains the only functioning Jerusalem-Ankara back-channel even as public rhetoric hardens, so sidelining him would remove the mechanism that has contained prior crises without resolving the underlying rivalry, and his command of sensitive files on Erdogan's inner circle gives the president structural incentive to exile him diplomatically before any succession contest. His ties to the Iranian axis alongside Mossad cooperation leave his ultimate alignment ambiguous. The single-source account, run through Kikar HaShabbat with JFeed relaying rather than independently corroborating, could itself reflect a calculated leak by Israeli or Turkish rivals meant to weaken his standing before Erdogan decides on a successor. Losing him would strip Israel of its most reliable interlocutor inside Turkish security precisely as Ankara's public posture continues to sharpen.

2 sources