BURSA
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc called the resignation of Turkey’s top intelligence agency chief to participate in the upcoming elections as a waste.
Arinc's remarks came shortly after the Prime Ministry announced the resignation of National Intelligence Organization or the MIT chief Hakan Fidan Friday night, who is expected to run in the June 7 elections.
"Personally, I think seeing a person, who was assigned the duty of Superman, entering the parliament to become a Member of Parliament is a waste," Arinc told CNNTURK in a televised interview.
"He was doing a job that 50 MPs did. I think this duty was way too important, he should have kept it," he added.
The deputy prime minister denied that the former intelligence chief planned to become the prime minister when a new cabinet is appointed after the elections.
"I think it is not possible for him to be prime minister. It would be wrong to be premier for a person who ran the intelligence agency," Arinc said.
Fidan, who was the MIT chief since May 2010, has been an influential figure in Turkey and made headlines several times related to Turkey's solution process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party or the PKK and Middle East policy.
Muhammed Dervisoglu, a former deputy head of intelligence body, is tipped to be the new intelligence chief. Dervisoglu is currently the head of Undersecretariat of Public Order and Security, a body that coordinates counterterrorism activities in Turkey.
The deputy prime minister also clarified that there would be no vacuum in the solution process on the Kurdish issue because of the resignation of intelligence chief, especially since Dervisoglu was one of the state officials involved in the talks with the Kurdish side.
Turkey launched a solution process to end the decades-old conflict with PKK, a dispute that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people over more than 30 years.
