Sinan Selen (born 1972,Istanbul) is a German constitutional lawyer,executive officer and the Vice-President of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Selen is the first high-ranking officer with a migrant background in the German intelligence services.[1][2][3][4]
Selen entered the Ministry of the Interior in 2006,and initially his work was focused on the ban of the Salafist organization Millatu Ibrahim.[6] He served as the head of the international counter-terrorism department until 2009.[7] Between 2009 and 2012 he was assigned to the Headquarters of the Federal Police in the counter-piracy and human trafficking department.[7] From 2012 onwards he worked in the Ministry of the Interior where[7] in early 2016 he was given the task to coordinate between Turkey and Germany on terror-related issues.[4] As a result,he and the diplomat Emily Haber often travelled to Ankara,Turkey.[5] In their conversations with the Turkish authorities,he refused to extradite members of the Gülen movement,and conversed through a translator in the German language most of the time.[5]
From 2016 Selen was in charge of security for the travel agency TUI.[4] In January 2019 he assumed the role of Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV),[7] succeeding Thomas Haldenwang who was appointed president of the BfV.[4]
Reception
Selen's appointment to the vice-presidency of the BfV caused concerns across the political spectrum. The left was worried that he would cause difficulties for Kurdish sympathizers of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and left-wing Turkish political activists,[5] while the right accused him of being a Muslim,which he actually is not.[5] The Greens welcomed his appointment.[6]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
