İbrahim Kalın

İbrahim Kalın
Official portrait, 2018
Director of the National Intelligence Organization
Incumbent
Assumed office 5 June 2023
President	Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Preceded by	Hakan Fidan
Spokesperson of the Presidency of Turkey
In office 11 December 2014 – 4 June 2023
President	Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Preceded by	Ahmet Sever
Personal details
Born	(1971-09-15) September 15, 1971 Istanbul, Turkey
Political party	Justice and Development Party
Children	3
Alma mater	Istanbul University (BA) George Washington University (PhD)

İbrahim Kalın (born September 15, 1971) is a Turkish bureaucrat who is the current director of the National Intelligence Organization. A member of the AK Party, he previously served as the presidential spokesperson and adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from 2014 to 2023 and as the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Security and Foreign Policy in the Presidential Complex.

Education and academic career

İbrahim Kalın was born in Istanbul into a family from Erzurum. Kalın received his B.A. from the University of Istanbul and Ph.D. from George Washington University under the supervision of Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr. From 2002 to 2005 he was a faculty member at the Department of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is a founding member and former director (2005–2009) of the SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research based in Ankara, Turkey.

Bureaucratic career

Kalın with Andriy Yermak, head of Office of the President of Ukraine, 2020

He became the first coordinator of the Prime Ministry Public Diplomacy Coordinatorship established in January 2010. In 2012, he became Deputy Undersecretary of the Prime Ministry. On December 11, 2014, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that İbrahim Kalın would be the first official Turkish Presidential Press Secretary. In November 2018, he was appointed as Chief Adviser to Erdogan.

Personal life

His parents are from İspir, Erzurum. He is married and has 2 children. His hobbies include music, especially folk music. He professionally plays the bağlama, sings and has music on YouTube with millions of views.

Selected works

As author

• Knowledge as Light. Critical Remarks on M. Hairi Yazdi's Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence. In: American Journal of Islamic and Social Sciences. Vol. 16 (1999), pp. 85–97 (online).
• Islam and the West, 2007 (2007 Writers Association of Turkey award for best book)
• Knowledge in later Islamic philosophy. Mullā Ṣadrā on existence, intellect, and intuition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010.
• Islam in Turkey. Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010.

As editor

• with John L. Esposito: The 500 Most Influential Muslims annual, Amman, Jordan: Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, 1st edition, 2009.
• with John L. Esposito: Islamophobia. The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011.
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam, Oxford University Press, 2014.

As contributor

• MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd Edition
• MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion 2nd Edition
• Biographical Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy
• Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World

External links

• Official website
• Column archives at Daily Sabah Newspaper
• Column archives at Yeni Şafak