File Photo: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AP Photo)
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he did not welcome a decision by the country's powerful spy chief to quit and run for parliament, signalling a possible rift over plans for looming elections among the ruling elite.
Mr Erdogan's reaction to the move by Hakan Fidan, one of his main allies, surprised commentators who had widely predicted the intelligence chief would stand in June elections - and depicted it as part of a plan to strengthen the ruling party's power base in parliament.
"I don't view his candidacy positively. I said this to the prime minister," Mr Erdogan told reporters atIstanbul airport on yesterday.
The president did not spell out his reasons. But analysts suggested Mr Erdogan may have intervened because he had come to rely on Mr Fidan at the helm of the intelligence agency.
"Mr Hakan Fidan is Mr Erdogan's man in Turkey's intelligence community. He is at the centre of the Kurdish peace talks ... and Turkey's Syrian policy. Who can replace him," said Jonathan Friedman, senior associate at Stroz Friedberg.
The Turkish constitution demands that the president remains impartial, and Mr Erdogan acknowledged Mr Fidan's candidacy was a matter for loyalist Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.
"I have no authority to interfere in that (decision). I don't have the right," the president said.
But Mr Erdogan has made little secret of his determination to keep a firm grip on politics and the ruling AK Party since he ascended from the office of prime minister last year.
Any split between Mr Erdogan and Davutoglu would concern investors, said Friedman, "because if they have a falling out, then all bets are off for Turkey's political stability."
The opposition has regularly criticised Mr Erdogan for continuing to involve himself in daily politics.
M Fidan, who has so far made no comment, had been tipped by many as a potential foreign minister.
Since taking over at the MIT intelligence agency in 2010, he has been central to tackling a hacking scandal in which secretly recorded conversations suggesting wrongdoing by top officials were leaked online.
Mr Erdogan has dismissed the scandal as an attempt to unseat him by supporters of his former ally turned arch rival, the US based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen.
Mr Fidan's departure comes at a difficult time regionally for Turkey, with mounting security threats posed by instability along its Iraq and Syria borders.
© Thomson Reuters 2015