Turkey After the 2023 Elections: Do Existing Paradigms Still Work?

Ali Bilgic is a Reader in International Relations and Security at Loughborough University. He has a Ph.D. from Aberystwyth University (UK), and MA in European Politics from Lund University (Sweden).His research interests include Middle East politics and international relations, security studies, migration, postcolonial and feminist international relations, gender studies, and emotions in global politics.

He is the author of Rethinking Security in the Age of Migration: Trust and Emancipation in Europe(Routledge, 2013 and 2018, 2nd edition) and Turkey, Power and the West: Gendered International Relations and Foreign Policy (Bloomsbury, 2016). His third book Positive Security: Collective Life in an Uncertain World was published in 2022 by Routledge. His articles have appeared in leading journals such as International Affairs, Review of International Studies, Security Dialogue, Political Psychology, International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Evren Balta is a Professor of International Relations at Özyeğin University. She holds a Ph.D in Political Science from The Graduate Center, CUNY, an MA in Sociology from Middle East Technical University and an MIA from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs.

Her research areas include citizenship, populism, security and foreign policy. She is the author of Politics of the Future (with Fuat Keyman, Ayrinti Publications, 2022), The American Passport in Turkey: National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism (with O Altan-Olcay, UPenn, 2020), Age of Uneasiness (İletisim Publications, 2019) and Global Security Complex (İletisim Publications, 2012).

She is the editor of Neighbors with Suspicion: Dynamics of Turkish-Russian Relations (with G. Ozcan and B. Besgul, İletisim Publications, 2017); Introduction to Global Politics (Iletisim Publications, 2014) and Military, State and Politics in Turkey (with I. Akca, Bilgi University Publications, 2010).

Senem Aydın-Düzgit is a Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Sabancı University and Senior Scholar and Research and Academic Affairs Coordinator at the Istanbul Policy Center.

Her main research interests include European foreign policy, Turkish foreign policy, EU-Turkey relations, discourse studies and identity in international relations and particularly in European foreign policy. She has also conducted research and published in the field of international democracy support, both in the context of European foreign policy through enlargement and Turkish foreign policy.

She holds a Ph.D. from Vrije Universiteit Brussels, an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA from Boğaziçi University.

Her articles are forthcoming or published in journals such as International Affairs, European Journal of International Relations, Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, Democratization, Cooperation and Conflict, Third World Quarterly, Politics, South European Society and Politics, among others. She is the co-author of Turkey and the European Union (Palgrave, 2015) and author of Constructions of European Identity (Palgrave, 2012). She is a fellow of the Young Academy of Europe, a member of the ECFR Council and a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. She was awarded the Young Scientist Award of Turkey’s Science Academy (BAGEP) in 2014.

Ahmet Erdi Öztürk is an Associate Professor of politics and international relations at London Metropolitan University and an associate researcher (Chercheur Associé) at Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes and Non-Residence Scholar at ELIAMEP’s Turkey Programme. He is also working as Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at Coventry University in the UK and GIGA in Germany (between 2021-2023).

He is the co-editor of Edinburg University Press’ Series on Modern Turkey, associate editor of Middle East Critique and South East Europe and Black Sea Studies and editor of International Journal of Religion. He was a Swedish Institute Pre and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University, Scholar in Residence at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

He is the author of more than 245 peer-review journal articles, numerous policy reports, opinion pieces and co-editor of four special issues on religion and politics and Turkish politics. Ahmet is the co-editor of Authoritarian Politics in Turkey: Elections, Resistance and the AKP (IB Tauris 2017), Ruin or Resilience? The Future of the Gulen Movement in Transnational Political Exile (Routledge 2018) and Islam, Populism and Regime Change in Turkey (Routledge 2019). In January 2021, his first solo-authored book, Religion, Identity and Power: Turkey and the Balkans in the Twenty-First Century was published by Edinburgh University Press. He is a regular contributor to media outlets such as Open Democracy, The Conversation, Huffington Post and France 24. He is the winner of London Metropolitan University’s (2020) and ISA ENMISA group’s (2022) Emerging Scholar Award.