Turkish-born counterterrorism expert Sinan Selen succeeds Thomas Haldenwag, as president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Agency for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
Sinan Selen has been appointed as the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency after his predecessor, Thomas Haldenwag, resigned in November last year to run for election to the federal parliament on the ticket of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Having served as an interim vice-president of the agency since the resignation of his predecessor, Selen was officially appointed to fill the vacancy by interior minister Alexander Dobrindt on Wednesday 15th of September.
The appointment of the highly experienced 53-year-old has been well-received in political and security circles, with Roderich Kieswetter, a member of the CDU contingent in the Bundestag, praising the appointment as “an excellent personnel decision, for Sinan Selen brings the best expertise as well as necessary, comprehensive experience”.
After moving with his parents, who were both journalists, from Istanbul to Cologne at the age of four, Selen was raised and attended university in the city. Selen studied law and, in the year 2000, began working for the Federal Crime Agency (BKA), where he was responsible for the security of then-Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder and his interior minister. In 2006, he became head of the division for combatting foreign terrorism at the interior ministry, before taking on a role overseeing border security at the federal police force three years later.
Between 2012 and 2016 Selen served at the interior ministry once again as a counterterrorism expert. During this time, he oversaw efforts to establish a collaborative relationship with Turkey to combat international terrorism. Towards the end of his tenure, he came under pressure from Turkish government to extradite opposition figures in the wake of a sweeping crackdown on dissent after an attempted coup aimed at removing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from power. Selen resisted the intervention and gave up his Turkish citizenship in the same year.
After three years working the private sector for package holiday and travel giant TUI, Selen was appointed as vice-president of the BfV for the first time in 2019. His tenure serving as a deputy to Thomas Haldenwag saw the classification of the political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the largest opposition bloc in the Bundestag, as a ‘certified right-wing extremist’ organisation, a decision which Selen himself had long supported. The new president of the BfV is on record as stating that the AfD adopts a “hostile attitude towards migrants and Muslims” and accusing the party of devaluing entire groups of people.
Selen, described by Alexander Dobridt, the man who appointed him, as an “extremely experienced security expert”, will be greeted with a packed in-tray as he assumes his new post, as the agency turns it attention to hybrid threats and grapples with the fallout from the decision to classify the AfD as a ‘certified right-wing extremist’ organisation. The party has lodged an appeal against the agency’s decision, and the process is likely to take several years.
Selen has developed a reputation as an effective mediator, though he promises to adopt an uncompromising approach to dealing with hybrid threats from hostile state actors such as Russia, Iran and China, as well as so-called low-level threats from petty criminals hired to work on behalf of these actors. The new appointee has requested increased funding and more staff for the agency from the interior ministry, eliciting a positive response from interior minister Dobrindt.
The agency’s budget for 2026 is due to increase by 36% in comparison to 2024, an injection of resources which Selen regards as essential in the context of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Another measure central to Selen’s overall strategy is the establishment of separate task forces to tackle threats in specific fields.
In comments to the newspaper Welt am Sonntag in August, made while he was still serving as interim vice-president. Selen drew attention to his agency’s evolving role, highlighting how “[its] role as a counterintelligence service is becoming ever more important, like in other western countries”. He went on to say that the agency was now treating state actors as the greatest potential threat to the constitutional order, noting that the agency was ‘observing a “loosening of inhibitions” on the part of Russia, also noting that “injuries and even deaths are knowingly priced in” in sabotage operations. He further claimed that Russia was using the smuggling of migrants to Germany and attempts to influence political decisions in pursuit of its goals.
Image details: Sinan Selen pictured in April 2023 at the Potsdam Cybersecurity Conference via Cybersec22 (Wikimedia Commons)
