Associate Professor of International Relations, Koc University | Istanbul, Turkey

Murat Somer is senior visiting scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies and associate professor of international relations (comparative politics and Turkish politics) at Koç in Istanbul.

Dr. Somer’s research on democratization, political moderation, religious and secular politics, ethnic conflicts, political Islam, and the Kurdish question have been published in book volumes and academic journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, and The Middle East Journal. His opinion pieces have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Policy and The National. He is a frequent contributor to Turkish and International broadcast media on Turkish and regional politics and international relations.

Somer is a former  Mellon post-doctoral fellow in modern ethnic conflicts at the University of Washington in Seattle and a former Democracy and Development fellow at Princeton University in New Jersey. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University and a doctorate in political economy and public policy from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.