Germany: Turkish-Muslim Appointed Second-In-Command of Domestic Intelligence by Soeren Kern

 Sinan Selen, a 46-year-old Istanbul-born counter-terrorism expert, will be the first Muslim to fill a top leadership position within Germany’s intelligence community.
 Throughout his government career, Selen has been resolute in confronting Islamic fundamentalists in Germany. He also led efforts at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to monitor the Turkish nationalist Milli Görüs, an influential Islamist movement strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society.
 The leadership changes at the BfV were spurred by a cellphone video that purportedly showed right-wing mobs attacking migrants over the murder of a German citizen in Chemnitz by two failed asylum seekers. According to the respected blog Tichys Einblick, the video actually documented migrants attacking Germans, not Germans “hunting” migrants.
…By choosing Selen, Merkel appears to be trying to achieve several objectives. First, she seems to be attempting to save her floundering government by placating the SPD, which has demanded that the domestic intelligence agency begin monitoring the AfD party, and which has called for more people with a “migration background” in leadership positions at federal agencies.
Selen’s appointment also seems to be a symbolic move aimed at reaching out to Germany’s Turkish community, which has long complained of “institutionalized racism” within the German security apparatus. Finally, by appointing an ethnic Turk, Merkel appears to be trying to mollify Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has repeatedly pressed for her to crack down on anti-Turkish Kurdish elements in Germany.
Selen studied law at the University of Cologne and in 2000 began his career at Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA), where he was promoted to head of the counterterrorism investigation unit. In 2006, he became deputy head of the cross-border crime unit at the Federal Police (Bundespolizei). In 2011, he was named head of the counter-terrorism unit at the Interior Ministry.
In May 2016, Die Welt reported that Merkel had appointed Selen to lead — apparently at Erdogan’s behest — a special counter-terrorism task force at the German Interior Ministry. The concession was part of the March 2016 EU-Turkey migrant deal, which was designed to halt the flow of migrants from Turkey to Greece. (by gatestoneinstitute.org).

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