For decades, Graham E. Fuller occupied an unusual space between analysis and accusation, scholarship and suspicion. In Washington, he was a seasoned intelligence strategist who tried to reinterpret political Islam and regional transformation for American policymakers. In Türkiye, he gradually became something else: a symbolic node in a larger story about coups, FETÖ, Kurdish policy, and the fragility of trust between NATO allies. His life unfolded along the fault lines of U.S.–Türkiye relations, and in death, he remains anchored there.
His death on January 29, 2026, in Canada at the age of 89, followed by a quiet burial in February at an undisclosed location, did not close the debate surrounding him. On the contrary, it revived it. In Turkish political discourse, Fuller was never seen as merely a retired intelligence official. Over time, he had come to represent something far larger than his formal titles: he had become a symbol.
The intelligence officer: Architecture of strategy, not operations
Fuller served in the CIA from 1961 to 1987, rising to become Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and a senior figure shaping Middle East assessments. His expertise focused on Iran, Afghanistan, Türkiye, and the broader Islamic world. Unlike field operatives associated with covert action, Fuller’s career centered on analysis, strategic evaluation, and long-term policy design.
During the Cold War, Türkiye was a critical NATO anchor. U.S. strategy aimed to contain Soviet influence while managing internal instability. Fuller’s work contributed to broader intelligence assessments about how political Islam, nationalism, and military structures intersected in regional politics.
After leaving the CIA, he spent decades at the RAND Corporation, continuing to analyze Middle Eastern transformation. His intellectual posture was pragmatic rather than ideological. He argued that Islamic political movements, if integrated into formal systems, could act as stabilizing forces rather than revolutionary threats.
In Washington, this was seen as adaptive realism. In Türkiye, it later acquired a different resonance.
The 1980 coup memory: Proximity and mythology
The September 12, 1980 coup remains one of the most traumatic ruptures in modern Turkish history. The phrase “Our boys have done it,” attributed to CIA station chief Paul Henze, entered the political lexicon as shorthand for alleged American approval of the intervention.
Fuller’s CIA tenure overlapped with that period. However, no direct documentation places him in operational planning of the coup. His responsibilities were analytic rather than tactical. Yet within Turkish political memory, Cold War intelligence figures often merge into a single narrative of U.S. oversight.
Over time, Fuller became part of that narrative. Not because of documented command authority, but because his career spanned the era in which U.S.–Turkish military coordination was at its peak.
In political memory, nuance is frequently displaced by symbolism.
The intellectual turn: Political Islam as strategic variable
After retirement, Fuller wrote extensively on political Islam. Books such as The Future of Political Islam and works on Türkiye’s transformation positioned him as a leading voice arguing that Islamic movements could evolve within democratic frameworks.
His advocacy of engaging Islamist actors was framed as an antidote to radicalization. Yet in the Turkish context, especially after the 2016 coup attempt, this theoretical stance was reinterpreted as facilitation.
Fuller’s most controversial action was his 2006 letter supporting Fethullah Gülen’s U.S. residency application. He described Gülen as a moderate Islamic figure unlikely to pose a threat. At the time, Gülen’s network maintained a different public profile internationally than it later acquired in Türkiye’s official narrative.
After July 15, that letter became central evidence in accusations against him.
July 15 and Büyükada: From analyst to alleged actor
Following the failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt, Turkish authorities designated the Gülen movement as FETÖ and launched sweeping investigations. In 2017, an arrest warrant was issued in Türkiye for Fuller, accusing him of links to the coup plot.
Reports alleged that on the night of July 15 he was present on Büyükada alongside Middle East analyst Henri Barkey, coordinating events. Fuller categorically denied the claims, stating he had no involvement in the coup and no operational role in Turkish domestic affairs.
International legal bodies have not established direct evidence tying him to operational planning. However, within Türkiye’s political discourse, the allegation became deeply embedded.
His name transformed from analyst to alleged strategist behind the curtain.
The RAND years and the “New Turkey” debate
Fuller’s later writings addressed what he termed the emergence of a “New Turkey.” He argued that Türkiye was redefining itself beyond strict Kemalist secularism and recalibrating its position between East and West. He criticized aspects of Western policy toward Ankara while also expressing concern about authoritarian drift.
These analyses were read differently across audiences. Some viewed them as nuanced scholarship. Others saw them as attempts to influence internal transformation.
His intellectual collaboration with figures like Henri Barkey on Kurdish issues and regional autonomy debates further fed suspicion in Turkish nationalist circles.
The narrative divide
Fuller’s legacy is divided along geopolitical lines:
In U.S. strategic circles, he is remembered as a thoughtful, sometimes contrarian analyst who urged Washington to rethink rigid secular frameworks in the Islamic world.
In Türkiye, he became emblematic of a broader suspicion that U.S. intelligence has historically shaped internal political trajectories, from the Cold War to the post-9/11 period and beyond.
He denied operational involvement in the 2016 coup attempt. Yet denial did not erase perception.
A figure of structural mistrust
Ultimately, Graham Fuller’s prominence in Türkiye cannot be explained solely through biography, documented actions, or even specific allegations. His enduring visibility reflects a deeper structural tension embedded in U.S.–Turkish relations. He became a personification of mistrust.
Türkiye and the United States have been NATO allies since 1952. Yet alliance has never meant full strategic convergence. From the outset, the partnership was asymmetrical. Washington viewed Türkiye as a forward bulwark against Soviet expansion. Ankara viewed the alliance as a security guarantee in a volatile neighborhood. During the Cold War, this convergence masked latent differences. After the Cold War, those differences became increasingly visible.
Fuller’s career unfolded across precisely these fault lines.
Cold War containment and the logic of stability
In the Cold War era, U.S. policy prioritised stability over democratic nuance. Military interventions in allied states were often tolerated if they preserved NATO alignment. The 1980 coup in Türkiye, regardless of the extent of U.S. foreknowledge or involvement, was interpreted in Washington primarily through the lens of anti-communist stabilization.
For many in Türkiye, however, that period became associated with external complicity in domestic authoritarian rupture. Whether Fuller personally played a role in operational decisions is secondary to the symbolic alignment: he was part of the intelligence ecosystem during an era when Turkish sovereignty felt conditional.
This divergence between strategic necessity and national memory laid the groundwork for future suspicion.
Post-Cold War recalibration
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the unifying logic of containment. In its place emerged new debates about political Islam, democratization, and regional order. Fuller’s post-retirement advocacy for engaging Islamist movements rather than suppressing them fit within broader American discussions about accommodating religious political actors.
Yet in Türkiye, the evolution of political Islam unfolded in a uniquely domestic context. What Washington framed as strategic adaptation could be interpreted in Ankara as social engineering. The notion that U.S. think tanks and intelligence veterans were theorizing Türkiye’s transformation reinforced anxieties about ideological influence.
Thus Fuller’s writings on the “New Turkey” and political Islam were not read merely as scholarship. They were read as strategic positioning.
Divergent threat perceptions
After 2003, the gap between Ankara and Washington widened markedly. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq unsettled regional balances and empowered new actors along Türkiye’s southern frontier. The Kurdish issue, long treated as a domestic security matter within Türkiye, acquired an overt cross-border dimension.
Following 2014, U.S. military cooperation with the Syrian extension of the outlawed PKK further eroded trust. What Washington framed as a pragmatic, battlefield-driven partnership against ISIS was perceived in Ankara as strategic shortsightedness. For Türkiye, engagement with a group it designates as a terrorist organization was not a tactical inconvenience. It was an existential security concern incompatible with the spirit of alliance solidarity.
Within this atmosphere of suspicion, figures such as Fuller, historically linked to discussions on Kurdish autonomy and political Islam, were folded into a broader narrative of American ambivalence. His long record of analysis became, in Turkish political perception, emblematic of what many described as a pattern of U.S. double standards: partnership in rhetoric, divergence in practice.
July 15 and the securitisation of politics
The failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016 marked a structural rupture. The Turkish state redefined internal and external threat matrices simultaneously. FETÖ was designated as a terrorist organization. The perception that Western governments responded hesitantly or ambiguously intensified suspicion.
Fuller’s earlier endorsement of Fethullah Gülen’s residency, previously a marginal detail, became central. Even absent proven operational links, the symbolic continuity between his intellectual advocacy of “moderate Islam” and the Gülen network’s trajectory fueled public narrative.
After 2016, Turkish domestic politics entered a securitized phase. Foreign influence ceased to be abstract. It became a concrete concern tied to sovereignty and survival. In that atmosphere, former intelligence officials were not neutral academics. They were potential actors in a hostile strategic landscape.
Fuller thus transitioned from analyst to emblem.
Structural mistrust as political grammar
The mistrust in question is not personal. It is systemic. It reflects:
– An alliance where one partner sees itself as indispensable to Western security, while the other evaluates it through cost-benefit calculations.
– A history in which military interventions, intelligence cooperation, and covert operations blur into political memory.
– Competing regional visions in Syria, Iraq, the Eastern Mediterranean, and beyond.
– A growing Turkish emphasis on strategic autonomy versus American emphasis on alliance discipline.
Fuller’s prominence in Turkish debate is therefore less about evidence and more about narrative function. He embodies the archetype of the American strategist who studies, influences, and recalibrates allied societies according to broader U.S. interests.
Across decades, Fuller appeared near moments of transition: Cold War stabilization logic. The normalization of political Islam. The Kurdish question’s internationalization. The post-2016 security paradigm. In each phase, he was analytically engaged with forces reshaping Türkiye. That analytical proximity, in a context of mistrust, became interpreted as strategic involvement.
Beyond the individual
The durability of Fuller’s name in Turkish discourse underscores a broader truth: alliances sustained by security necessity do not automatically generate trust. Trust requires convergent threat perception and mutual sensitivity to domestic trauma.
Fuller’s life illustrates how an intelligence strategist can outgrow his official role and enter the mythology of another nation’s political consciousness. Not necessarily because he commanded events, but because he stood close enough to history’s pressure points to be remembered as part of them.
In that sense, Graham Fuller became less a man and more a mirror reflecting the unresolved tensions of U.S.–Turkish relations: cooperation without intimacy, partnership without certainty, alliance without full trust.
Death without closure
When Fuller died in 2026, discussions resurfaced about FETÖ, Büyükada, and his “moderate Islam” doctrines. His passing did not close the debate because the debate was never solely about him. It was about sovereignty, influence, and alliance asymmetry.