President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said yesterday that he found the resignation of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Chief Hakan Fidan, to run for Parliament in the upcoming June election, inappropriate. Speaking before the start of his Latin America tour that will include visits to Colombia, Mexico and Cuba, Erdoğan said the decision to approve Fidan's parliamentary candidacy is up to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and he didn't have the authority to interfere. He also dismissed opposition criticism over Fidan's resignation, noting that any public servant had the right to resign and run for Parliament.Last Friday, Fidan resigned his position to run for a seat in Parliament in the upcoming general elections on June 7. While possible successors are being mentioned in political circles in Ankara, Fidan's next task if he is elected as a deputy also arouses curiosity. According to political sources in Ankara, the next undersecretary of Turkey's spy agency will be appointed after the general elections, and during this period İsmail Hakkı Musa, the current MİT deputy secretary, will serve as acting head. Sources also pointed to Muhammed Dervişoglu, the undersecretary of public order and security, an organization that combats terrorism, as the strongest candidate to replace Fidan. Meanwhile, political circles see Fidan as a potential future foreign minister. Current Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will be ineligible to run for Parliament in the next elections due to a party bylaw that limits deputies to three consecutive terms. Çavuşoğlu's absence is also seen as one of the factors that increase Fidan's chance of serving as foreign minister in the next cabinet if he is elected. Fidan was appointed MİT chief by then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in May 2010 when he was 42 years old. Apart from being the youngest MİT chief, he was also targeted by international media outlets a number of times and received assassination threats from Israeli media outlets. "Mossad might have acted a bit naive to believe that, after 50 years of cooperation, Turkey would not do that. If anyone deserves to find a special surprise in his car one morning, it's Fidan, the Turkish spy chief," the Israeli daily Jewish Press published on October 17, 2013. Before his appointment to the MİT, Fidan worked in Erdoğan's office as a deputy undersecretary. During this term Fidan secretly held talks in Oslo, Norway – the "Oslo talks" – with senior members of the PKK to find a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish issue. Voice recordings of the Oslo talks leaked in September 2011, and a few months later in February 2012, prosecutors, who are believed to be linked to U.S.-based imam Fettulah Gülen, attempted to interrogate Fidan about his supposed efforts to broker an end to the decades-long Kurdish conflict. Having received a degree in management and political science at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), Fidan earned a master's degree and doctorate at Bilkent University in Ankara. Fidan's master's thesis was titled "Intelligence and Foreign Policy: A Comparison of British, American, and Turkish Intelligence Systems." He was awarded a doctorate with the thesis "The Role of Information Technologies in Verifying International Agreements in the Age of Information." Fidan served in the Turkish Armed Forces as a non-commissioned officer for 15 years between 1986 and 2001. During his tenure in the military, he also worked in NATO's Germany-based Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). Prior to his appointment as a deputy undersecretary at the Prime Ministry, he served as the head of the Turkish Development and Cooperation Agency (TİKA) where he drew much public attention with successful operations.