Course Lecturers
Gülriz Şen
Dr. Gülriz Şen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey. She received her Ph.D. and B.Sc. degrees from Middle East Technical University, Department of International Relations, and holds an MA in Conflict and Sustainable Peace Studies from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), where she pursued her studies as a Jean Monnet scholar. Her major academic interests comprise Middle East politics with a particular focus on international relations of the Persian Gulf and the Levant, and gender in global politics. Dr. Şen published a Turkish translation of her award-winning Ph.D. thesis from METU Press in 2016 on the theme of Iran’s post-revolutionary foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States. She also authored articles, book chapters, and policy briefs on Iran-U.S., Iran-Turkey, and Iran-GCC affairs. Her recent collaborative research focuses on gendered perspectives of radicalization and violent extremism. Dr. Şen teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Global Politics; International Relations of the Middle East; Politics, Society, and Foreign Policy of Contemporary Iran; and Gender in International Relations.
Özlem Tür
Dr. Özlem Tür is a Professor of International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Her main expertise includes Syrian and Lebanese politics, Turkey’s relations with the Middle East, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Her publications include “Turkey-Syria Relations – Between Enmity and Amity” (London: Ashgate, 2013, co-edited with Raymond Hinnebusch); “Turkey and Israel in the 2000s” (Israel Studies, 2012); “Political Economy of Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East” (Turkish Studies, 2011); “Turkey’s Role in Middle East and Gulf Security” (Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2019); “Turkey and Egypt in the Yemen Crisis” (Stephen W. Day and Noel Brehony eds.); “Global, Regional and Local Dynamics in the Yemen Crisis” (Switzerland: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2020).
Meliha Altunışık
Meliha Benli Altunışık is a Professor in the Department of International Relations at Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara. She is a non-resident fellow in the Middle East Institute, Washington, DC. She has written mainly on international relations of the Middle East and Turkey’s foreign policy, including on ideology and pragmatism in foreign policy, cusp states, rentier state theory, humanitarian diplomacy, regional powers, regional rivalries and regionalism related to the Middle East and Turkey. Some of her recent publications include: “Change in Turkey’s Foreign Policy: Global Shifts and Domestic Politics,” Brian McKercher (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Statecraft and Diplomacy, Routledge. 2022; “The trajectory of a modified middle power: an attempt to make sense of Turkey’s foreign policy in its centennial,” Turkish Studies, 2023; “Humanitarian diplomacy as Turkey’s national role conception and performance: evidence from Somalia and Afghanistan,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2023; “Turkey and the Middle East and North Africa under the AKP: A Three Level Analysis of Foreign Policy Change,” (with Lenore G. Martin), Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 2023; “Domestic Sources of AKP Foreign Policy: Between Ideology and Pragmatism,” In: B. Özkececi-Taner and S. Açıkmeşe (eds) One Hundred Years of Turkish Foreign Policy (1923-2023): Historical and Theoretical Reflections, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Eduard Soler i Lecha
Eduard Soler i Lecha is an Associate Professor in International Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Associate Senior Researcher at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs). He holds a PhD in International Relations and Graduate in Political Science. His main areas of expertise are geopolitics, foresight, foreign policy, Turkey and the Middle East and North Africa region. He has a long experience participating and leading collaborative research and training projects such as MENARA, a CIDOB led H2020 project on geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa that involved 14 partners and around 50 researchers; and El Hiwar (2013-2022), a Euro-Arab diplomacy training project implemented by the College of Europe (Bruges). In 2010 he was seconded as an advisor in the Mediterranean Unit of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was actively involved in the preparation and implementation of Mediterranean initiatives under the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. He is also an adjunct professor at IBEI and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), teaching on Mediterranean and Middle East international relations, among other issues. He is a member of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy and is part the international advisory boards of Mediterranean Politics, IEMed’s Mediterranean Yearbook and the Berlin-based Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP).
Haldun Yalçınkaya
Haldun Yalçınkaya is the chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at TOBB Economics and Technology University in Ankara / Turkey. Professor Yalçınkaya has been conducting research on Foreign Terrorist Fighters of DAESH and Countering Violent Extremism since 2014 and serving as an academic advisor for the different activities of the NATO Center of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism since 2019. He graduated from Kuleli Military High School and later Turkish Military Academy. During his military service as an officer, he completed his post-graduate studies in International Relations at İstanbul University. Dr. Yalçınkaya studied “peacekeeping” at the MA level and “transformation of war” at the Ph.D. level. After earning his Ph.D. degree, he had post-doctoral Research and joined the Changing Character of War Project at Oxford University between 2009-2010. Furthermore, during his military service, he served in Afghanistan in 2005. He published four books on war and terrorism issues and several academic articles/book chapters on International Security issues focusing on new actors on the battlefields as well as terrorism. After serving more than ten years at Turkish Military Academy he has been Professor in International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology since 2013 and founder of Bodrum Institute.
Ömer Önhon
After graduating from Kingston University with a degree in Politics and Economics, he worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1985 and 2021. After serving as Ambassador to Riyadh, Permanent Representative to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Permanent Representative to NATO, and Ambassador to Damascus, Önhon served as Consul General in New York, Ambassador to Damascus and Madrid, Deputy Undersecretary for Middle East and Asian Affairs and Director General for International Security Affairs at the Centre.
Önhon is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Ankara Policy Centre and Director of the Eurasian Centre for Security and Cooperation at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey. Önhon, who has published a book titled “Syria from the Ambassador’s Perspective”, has worked as a writer for the newspaper “Sharq al Awsat”. For the last year, he has been writing for “Al Majalla”, which belongs to the same publishing group.
Peter Marinov
Col. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Petar Marinov began his service in 1997 as an officer-engineer of radar systems. He served in the air defense system of the Land Forces and passed through various positions, including a senior expert in the command of the Bulgarian Army. Since 2010, he has been a professor at the Rakovski National Defense College. The chance and challenge to participate in missions of the Bulgarian army in Iraq and Afghanistan awakened his interest not only in the manifestations of terrorism but also in the reasons for its occurrence. He explores various aspects of unconventional threats, radicalization processes, and asymmetry in the conduct of operations. COL. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Petar Marinov has undergone a number of specializations in Bulgaria as well as in the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies (DIILS) – USA and NATO Center of Excellence – Defense against Terrorism (COE-DAT) – TÜrkiye. Col. Prof. Dr. Marinov is the main author and head of the master’s program “Security and Countering Radicalization and Terrorism” and from 2022 onwards he is a member of the NATO Independence Scientific Evaluation Group (ISEG) with the responsibility of “Counter-Terrorism.
Arukan Açar
Dr. Açar completed his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. at the Department of International Relations, Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey. He worked in the same department as a research assistant. He did field research in various parts of the Balkans as well as worked for the OSCE missions in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr. Açar spent a year as a Ph.D. research fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London with the Jean Monnet Scholarship. After briefly teaching at the Turkish Military College he joined the Department of International Relations at Yaşar University, Turkey as an assistant professor where he currently teaches. There he also served until recently as the Vice-chair of the Yaşar University Center for Mediterranean Studies. His major areas of interest are foreign policies, Euro-Atlantic integration processes, transition politics and the political economy of the Balkan states in general, Albania and Kosovo in particular; small states in world affairs; international peace operations and post-conflict involvements of the international community; international and European security; small wars, insurgencies, and counterinsurgency operations; international politics of oil; and wider Mediterranean politics. Dr. Açar teaches Diplomatic History, Foreign Policy Analysis, and International Organizations at the undergraduate and Politics of International Oil and Small Wars and Insurgencies courses at the graduate programs.
