Soli Özel

Soli Özel joined Institut Montaigne as a senior fellow in June 2018. 

He is professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, and a columnist for the Turkish daily Habertürk. 

Since 2002, Soli Özel has also contributed to Project Syndicate on different occasions, commenting on Turkish politics. He served on the board of directors of International Alert and is currently a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He was also an advisor to the Chairman the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TÜSIAD) on foreign policy issues. He has guest lectured at Harvard, Tufts, and other US universities and has taught at UC Santa Cruz, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the University of Washington, Northwestern University, the Hebrew University, Boğaziçi University and Bilgi University (Istanbul). 

He also spent time as a fellow of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford and was a visiting senior scholar at the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris. He was a Fisher Family Fellow of the “Future of Diplomacy Program” at the Belfer Center of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2013, he was a Keyman fellow and a visiting lecturer at Northwestern University. Soli Özel regularly contributes to the German Marshall Fund’s web site’s “ON Turkey” series. His work has been printed in different publications in Turkey and abroad, including The International Spectator, Internationale Politik and the Journal of Democracy. He also occupied the position of Editor-in-Chief at Foreign Policy Turkish edition. 

Soli Özel holds a Bachelor in Economics from Bennington College and a Master in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. 

Publications: 

Books:

• The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey #occupygezi, A Moment of Elation: The Gezi Protests/Resistance and the Fading of the AKP Project ed. U. Ozkirimli, 2014
• Rebuilding a Partnership: Turkish-American relations for a new era; a Turkish perspective, co-authored with Şuhnaz Yılmaz, TÜSİAD Publication, 2009 

Articles: 

• February 2018. The Transatlantic Drift and the Waning of Turkey’s 'Strategic Westernness’, Heinrich Böll Stiftung
• June 2018. Cultural Policy and Management Yearbook, Politics of Populism: Power and Protest in the Global Age, co-authored with Evren Balta, Istanbul Bilgi University Press