Prof. Dr. Haldun Yalçınkaya is the chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at TOBB Economics and Technology University in Ankara / Türkiye. 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 MA level and “transformation of war” at Ph.D. level. After earning his Ph.D. degree, he had post-doctoral Research and joined the Changing Character of War Project in 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 of 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, as well as the coordinator of Bodrum+ Institute
Prof. Dr. Özlem Tür is Professor of International Relations at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Türkiye. Her main expertise include Türkiye’s relations with the Middle East (especially Syria, Israel and Lebanon), the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Feminist IR. Her publications include Türkiye-Syria Relations – Between Enmity and Amity (London: Ashgate, 2013, co-edited with Raymond Hinnebusch); “Türkiye and Israel in the 2000s” (Israel Studies, 2012); “Political Economy of Türkiye’s Relations with the Middle East” (Turkish Studies, 2011). -“Türkiye’s Role in Middle East and Gulf Security”, (Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2019), “Türkiye and Egypt in the Yemen Crisis” in Stephen W. Day and Noel Brehony (eds.), Global, Regional and Local Dynamics in the Yemen Crisis, (Switzerland: Palgrave-Macmillan,), 2020 and “Political Economy of the Arab States – Whither any Change?” in Youssef Cherif (ed.), the Modern Arab State – A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, 2021.
Dr. Gülriz Şen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Türkiye. 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, 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-Türkiye, 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 Modern Iran; and Gender in International Relations.
Assoc. Prof.Tuğçe Ersoy-Ceylan is a faculty member in the Department of International Relations at İzmir Katip Çelebi University. She graduated from Galatasaray University. She continued her education at the Center for Near Eastern and Mediterranean Studies (CREMO) at Université Lyon II in France. She received her Master’s degree from the METU Middle East Studies program and her PhD from the Marmara University Institute of Middle East Studies. She was a visiting fellow at the University of Haifa, Israel, in 2015. In 2022, she was a visiting scholar at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. She works on Israeli politics and society, the Palestinian question, and Türkiye-Israel relations. Her book titled ‘Conflicting Identities in Israel: Palestinians and Jews’ was published in 2020. Most recently, she edited the book ‘Israel: Identity, Politics, Foreign Policy, Security’ (2025, 2nd edition). .
Prof. Dr. Nur Köprülü completed her Bachelor’s degree in 1997 in the Department of International Relations at Eastern Mediterranean University, and her Master’s degree in 1999 in the International Relations Program at Middle East Technical University (METU-Ankara). Köprülü received her Ph.D. in 2007 from Middle East Technical University (METU-Ankara) with her dissertation seration on “Consolidation of National Identity in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” Subsequently, she served as a short-term visiting researcher at Queen Mary University of London in the United Kingdom in 2010. Köprülü conducts her academic research generally on Middle Eastern politics, specifically on the processes of democratization in the countries of the Arab georab geography in the post-2011 Arab Spring (Uprisings) period. In her studies, Köprülü examines the consolidation of monarchical regimes, regime types, and opposition, specifically through the example of the Kingdom of Jordan; she has articles published in prestigious journals in this field, including Middle East Policy, Middle Eastern Studies, Digest of Middle Eastern Studies, and British Journal of Middle East Studies. In her recent studies, Köprülü has focused on the factors shaping regime types and state-society relations in the wanseranst unto the Middle East and Me North Africa region. Köprülü also has co-authored publications published by Southeast European and Black Sea Studies and Mediterranean Politics. Köprülü has book chapters exploring Türkiye’s relations with the Middle East region in the post-2011 period, published by prestigious national and international publishing houses. In the book titled Türkiye’s Changing Transatlantic Relations, edited by Eda Kuşku Sönmez and Çiğdem Üstün and published by Lexington Publishers, Köprülü penned the chapter “The Transatlantic approach to Middle Eastern conflicts and Türkiye’s role”; recently, she contributed with the chapter “A Search for Balance Between Stability and Change in the Middle East: The Example of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” to the book titled Middle East and Foreign Policy, edited by Meliha Altunışık and published by Istanbul Bilgi University. Reports prepared by Köprülü on the domestic and foreign policy of the Kingdom of Jordan have been published by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM), the Institute for Strategic Thinking (SDE), and the Near East Institute (YDE). Prof. Dr. Nur Köprülü holds the position of Head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Near East University and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Center of Excellence.
Prof. Dr. Erdem Denk studied International Relations for his first degree at the Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye), Ankara University. After receiving his MA degree from the same school, he completed his PhD at Cardiff Law School, UK, in 2005. He is a Professor of International Relations at Mülkiye, where he has been working since 1998. He is the author and editor of twelve books (including two collaborations), and several articles on various aspects of international law as well as Turkish Foreign Policy. His main areas of interest are the theory and history of international law, de-colonial international studies, international organisations, international criminal justice and nuclear disarmament. He has recently been studying on “law and order since Paleolithic” and is preparing three books entitled “When There Was No State”, “Invention of the State” and “History of States”. A general summary of these studies, entitled “50 Thousand Years of World Order: Societies and Their Laws”, was published in September 2021. He has been organising “Arkeopolitics Conferences/Talks” since October 2022 at Mülkiye. These talks involve an archaeologist and a political scientist every month who respectively discuss prehistoric and modern aspects of any given topic.
Prof. Dr. Mehmet Özdoğan, entered the Prehistory Department of Istanbul University as a student in 1963. He was a student of world-famous scientists in their fields, such as Prof. Dr. Halet Çambel, Prof. Dr. Kurt Bittel, Prof. Dr. Robert J. Braidwood. Özdoğan, who spent his academic life at Istanbul University, served as the head of the Prehistory Department in 2000. Özdoğan specialized in the emergence of the settled lifestyle based on food production, known as the Neolithic, and its transfer models to Europe. In this context, he carried out the excavations in Çayönü, Mezraa Teleilat, Yarımburgaz, and Ağır Pınar. He currently continues his work in Thrace, Kırklareli region. Other areas of expertise are archaeological policies, the intellectual structure of archaeology, cultural heritage management, and geoarchaeology. Özdoğan, who is a foreign full member of the United States Academy of Science (NAS), a member of institutions such as the American Archaeological Institute (AIA), and German Archaeological Institutes (DAI), is also a member of the editorial board of many scientific journals published abroad. Özdoğan, who is the recipient of the TÜBA Service Award, the Italian State “Cavaliere” Order, and the Vehbi Koç Foundation 2008 Award, has more than 20 published books and nearly 300 scientific articles.
