Mehmet Ozkan

FellowDr. Mehmet Ozkan is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Global Policy. He previously taught as Professor of International Relations at Turkish National Police Academy in Ankara, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia; and International University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has also served as a researcher at SETA Foundation in Turkey; and a visiting researcher at Cairo University in Egypt and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in India. Before he took up his position as Colombia-based Regional Director of Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency in Latin America (2015-2018), Dr. Ozkan was director of the International Center for Terrorism and Transnational Crime in Ankara.

Dr. Ozkan holds a Ph.D. from Sevilla University (Spain), Master’s from Sweden and South Africa and Bachelor degree from Istanbul University, all in International Relations. His research focuses on religion and politics, Middle East, Horn of Africa, Latin American politics, radicalization, foreign policy of emerging powers, development, and more specifically Turkish foreign and domestic policy.

He is the author of several books, including "Foreign Policy After Tahrir Revolution: (Re-)Defining the Role of Egypt in the Middle East" (2011) and "Turkey's Involvement in Somalia: A State-Building in Progress" (2014). He also published many articles in leading journals such as the Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of International Development, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Insight Turkey, Turkish Studies, Turkish Policy Quarterly and others. He also published policy papers and op-ed pieces in newspapers in Turkish, English and Spanish and has been a contributor to, among many others, CNN en Español, NTN24, TRT World, France24, CNN Turk, NTV, and Al-Jazeera Arabic. He has participated in many international conferences as speaker, discussant and participant, he traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and North/South America.