Welcome!
I am an associate professor in WIAS at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Previously, I was an associate professor at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. I received my PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. Currently, I serve as a member of the Steering Committee of the Standing Group on International Relations at ECPR.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Political Behavior
International Organizations
International Political Economy
European Politics
Foreign Aid
My primary research interests are public opinion and political behavior on foreign policy. You can explore the topics I work on in the provided publications link.
I am always open to collaborations, so if you work on similar topics and would like to develop some joint projects, feel free to reach out.
EDUCATION
2012 University of Massachusetts Amherst
MA and PhD in Political Science
2004 Sabanci University, Istanbul
BA in Social and Political Science (Full Scholarship)
1999 Istanbul Erkek Lisesi
FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS
2024 Ramón y Cajal Fellowship- External Talent Shift, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities
2022-2023 The Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation (AvH), Germany
2022-2023 WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Visiting Researcher
2022 University of Münster, Visiting Fellow
2020 Young Scientist Award (BAGEP), Science Academy, Turkey
2018 TUSIAD & Stiftung Mercator Turkey Europe Future Forum Fellow
I work on public opinion on international cooperation and conflict. Regarding cooperation, I focus on three issue areas: attitudes toward international organizations (IOs), foreign aid, and trade liberalization and economic integration. In my research on conflict, I explore the dynamics of voter attitudes toward the use of force abroad. Methodologically, my works often utilize quantitative analysis on cross-sectional data to analyze mass attitudes in a number of countries comparatively, and survey experiments to uncover the causal mechanisms on the drivers of individual preferences. My academic expertise covers subjects on European integration, International Organizations, and International Political Economy.
Some examples of my recently published or forthcoming works:
Public Attitudes on Cooperation
Voter Reaction to Government’s Refusal of Natural Disaster Assistance: Experimental Evidence from Turkey and India
How do citizens respond to their government’s decision to accept or reject foreign assistance in the face of a natural disaster? While the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters necessitate international cooperation for effective response, there have been numerous instances where states have declined foreign assistance offers due to reputation concerns. In this article published in International Political Science Review, we focus on the domestic audience dynamics of such behavior. Drawing on experimental survey data from Turkey and India, two middle-income countries with geopolitical ambitions and recent experience in refusing foreign assistance, we find that accepting foreign assistance during natural disasters leads to higher evaluations of government performance, though this positive effect is driven by opposition voters only. Incumbent voters, conversely, solidify their support for the government regardless of its decision toward foreign assistance. The domestic political effects of government decisions in response to aid offers are largely independent of the identity of the country offering assistance.
Populism and Public Attitudes toward International Organizations: Voting, Communication, and Education
What effect does populism have on public attitudes toward International Organizations (IOs)? In this article recently published in The Review of International Organizations, we differentiate between populist communication – understood as IO criticism in line with populist core ideas – and populist voting as political behavior among citizens. We argue, first, that populist voters – that is, citizens voting for a populist party – are more critical of IOs. Second, IO-critical communication based on the democratic deficit of global governance and the loss of national sovereignty that populist parties often adopt have a substantially damaging impact on public IO attitudes. Third, we propose that the negative effect of IO-critical communication should be stronger among populist voters, and, fourth, considerably vary among groups of different educational levels.
To test our theoretical expectations, we first turn to World Values Survey data (7th wave) and demonstrate that populist voters are significantly more skeptical of IOs than non-populist voters, while the effect of populist voting is strongest for more educated citizens. Second, we use a preregistered survey experiment to explore the effect of IO-critical communication on IO favorability and determine if populist voting and educational levels moderate these communication effects. Our findings reveal that IO-critical communication substantially decreases confidence in IOs. Populist and non-populist voters do not differ in their susceptibility, yet IO-critical communication exerts its greatest effects among the higher educated.
When to not Respond in Kind? Individuals' Expectations of the Future and Support for Reciprocity in Foreign Policy
This paper, published in Political Behavior, investigates if individuals' negative assessments of the future drive micro-level reluctance for international cooperation and reciprocal behavior, a core principle of multilateralism. To test our theoretical expectations, we field online survey experiments on a sample of over 3,000 respondents in the US and Turkey in October-November 2020. The experimental results show that on average, individuals are fairly sensitive to target countries' policy actions and are inclined to reciprocate when contemplating whether to increase contributions to UN or consent to bilateral trade liberalization. Yet, further analyses concur that individual inclinations to reciprocate are substantially moderated by their future expectations. Specifically, individuals who are more pessimistic about their material prospects remain fairly indifferent to the positive actions of other countries, but are more likely to penalize negative foreign policy actions by reciprocating in kind.
Public Attitudes on Conflict
Policy Objective of Military Intervention and Public Attitudes: A Conjoint Experiment from US and Turkey
This paper, recently published in Political Behavior, scrutinizes the role of the principal policy objective of military intervention in conditioning citizen attitudes for the use of force. Extending the scope of analysis beyond the independent effects, it next assesses how the effects of two core variables of intervention, namely international organizations' approval of the operation and the regime type of the target country, vary for interventions with differing mandates. The results of the conjoint experiment in two dissimilar cases, the US and Turkey, show that despite substantial changes in relative support for different types of operations, policy objective is still a highly potent determinant of individual attitudes. The results also concur that compared to foreign policy restraint and humanitarian missions, individuals are more sensitive to international organizations' endorsements of the use of force for peace and internal political change operations. Finally, individuals are significantly disapproving of operations that seek internal political changes in democratic targets, though in contrast to the democratic peace theory, for other types of interventions, they are indifferent to the regime type of the opponent.
Outside of my academic life, I am an enthusiastic music listener (electronica, jazz, nu-jazz, indie), and hi-fi junkie (always in the hunt for some marginal improvements in sound). I also play board games, with my personal favorites being Gloomhaven, Robinson Crusoe, Wingspan, Beyond the Sun, and Ark Nova.
