İbrahim Kalın

İbrahim Kalın — Biography

İbrahim Kalın is an academic turned state official who has headed the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) since 2023. Before that he spent about nine years as presidential spokesperson with the rank of ambassador. He is also known as a specialist in Islamic philosophy, an author and a musician who plays the bağlama.

The Istanbul-born son of a family from İspir in Erzurum, he studied history at Istanbul University, took his master's in Malaysia and completed his doctorate at George Washington University in 2002 under Seyyed Hossein Nasr, with a thesis on Mulla Sadra. He taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts in 2002-2005 and was founding chairman of the SETA Foundation in 2005-2009. His 2007 book İslam ve Batı won the Turkish Writers' Union Fikir Ödülü (Ideas Award), and later works include Akıl ve Erdem, Varlık ve İdrak and Ben, Öteki ve Ötesi. He became a professor in 2020.

He entered public life in 2009 as chief foreign-policy adviser to the prime minister, became the first coordinator of the Public Diplomacy office created in 2010. He served as spokesperson from 2014 to 2023 and from 2018 also acted as deputy chairman of the Security and Foreign Policy Council. He was appointed to the MİT post, vacated when Hakan Fidan became foreign minister, on 5 June 2023. In 2025 he ranked 23rd on The Muslim 500 list.