Sinan Selen

In 2000 Selen began his career at the Federal Criminal Police Office^[1] where he was assigned to the security detail of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder^[5][6] and Minister of the Interior Otto Schily.^[5] After the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York on 11 September 2001 he searched for traces of evidence that the attackers left in Germany.^[5][6] In July 2006 he organized the hunt for two Lebanese terrorists who placed two bombs on regional trains at the Cologne main station.^[4] The attack failed as the bombs did not explode.^[4] After an extensive review of videos from surveillance cameras, one of the perpetrators was captured in the train station in Kiel.^[4] Afterwards, his accomplice in Lebanon surrendered as well.^[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]

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]

Selen may be less of an political activist than his predecessor, but he will not stand for a new BfV, concluded Oliver Maksan for the NZZ in 2025. It was in Selens time as acting BfV president, that a dubious report, classifying the party AFD as a right-wing extremist organisation, got published by the agency. Based on Selens statements, Maksan speculated that he would do more than Haldenwang to combat espionage and sabotage.^[8]