Cologne's Sinan Selen: First head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution with Turkish roots!

Cologne's Sinan Selen: First head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution with Turkish roots!

On September 17, 2025, Sinan Selen, a Cologne resident with Turkish roots, took a historically significant step by being selected as the first president of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution with such a background. Born in Istanbul in 1972, Selen moved with his family to Cologne at the age of four, where his parents worked at Deutsche Welle. His mother was even a presenter on the Turkish TV station TRT. Growing up in Cologne- Zollstock and Bayenthal, Selen felt the political pulse of his new home early on.

His school career took him to the Hildegard-Bingen-Gymnasium in Sülz, where he graduated from high school in 1991. He studied law at the University of Cologne with a focus on domestic and judicial policy in Europe. He already showed commitment during his school days as a paramedic with the Johanniter. Although he completed his basic military service in Turkey, he decided to renounce his Turkish citizenship and has been exclusively a German citizen ever since.

From the police to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution

Selen's professional career with the German security authorities began after studying law. From 2000 he worked at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), where he worked in both state security and personal protection for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. In addition to his work in the BKA, Selen was also a member of a special commission to investigate the attackers of September 11, 2001. In 2006, he took over the management of the search for the perpetrators of the suitcase bombs in Cologne.

In the same year he was appointed head of the “Foreign Terrorism and Foreigner Extremism” department in the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). With his participation, eleven terrorist attacks in Germany were thwarted between 2000 and 2016. After the refugee crisis in 2015, he took on the role of Federal Government Commissioner for Turkey and moved to TUI for a while in 2016 to develop corporate security there.

In 2019, he returned to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as Vice President and took over leadership on an interim basis after his predecessor Thomas Haldenwang resigned from his position. His future as president of the domestic secret service is being discussed in the new federal government, with Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt initially wanting to get a personal picture of Selen. Should he take up this office, he would not only be the first head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution with a migrant background, but also a defining personality in the German security architecture.

Challenges and outlook

Sinan Selen warned early on about the dangers emanating from Russia and described Germany as a “central target area in Europe”. This underlines the relevance of his new office, whose tasks are monitored by various supervisory bodies at federal and state level, such as the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and the Federal Audit Office, all of which play an important role in monitoring the tasks to be carried out by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution itself is not only subject to a judicial control system, but also to parliamentary monitoring by various committees in the Bundestag. These mechanisms are essential to ensure transparency and trust in the work of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Public control by citizens and the media is also important in order to examine the activities of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the light of the general public.

With Sinan Selen at the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, an experienced and committed security guard is ready to tackle Germany's security policy challenges in the coming years.

For all those who would like to find out more about the role of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Federal Government offers detailed information on the current structures and challenges in the Constitutional Protection Report 2024.

In the upcoming cabinet meeting, Sinan Selen's personality will be finally confirmed, which is of great importance both for security policy and for a further step towards diversity and integration in leadership positions.