My research explores how identity questions shape foreign policy across the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia — how states make sense of who they are, and how that shapes the decisions they make in the world.
I’m a political scientist working on the international relations of the Middle East, with particular interests in political Islam, identity and foreign policy, globalization, and the strategic cultures of the region. My research is centered on a question I keep returning to: How do states make sense of who they are, and how does that sense of identity — often contested and shifting — shape the decisions they make abroad? More recently, my intellectual interests have turned to the opportunities and challenges that new technologies present for international politics, particularly the ethical questions they raise.
My academic path has been a global one, taking me across three continents. Following an undergraduate degree in Kuala Lumpur, I earned my MA at the International University of Japan and, after a period of doctoral studies at the University of Tübingen, eventually completed my Ph.D. at the University of Utah in 2007. Along the way, I’ve taught at several U.S. and Turkish institutions, and I continue to teach an online course for FSM Vakıf University in Istanbul. This fall, I am joining the faculty at Nazareth University in Rochester as an Adjunct Professor.
In my most recent book, The Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy: Islamism and Nationalism (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), I trace Turkey’s move from its liberal, EU-oriented moment of the early 2000s to the nationalist, security-driven politics of today. I argue that this shift is driven more by domestic struggles than by external pressures. I have also authored Turkish Foreign Policy: Islam, Nationalism, and Globalization (Palgrave, 2011) and co-edited Religion and Politics in Saudi Arabia (Lynne Rienner, 2008), which was recognized as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book.
I live in Rochester, New York, with my family. When I’m not writing or teaching, I enjoy photography and bike riding.
The regional politics of the contemporary Middle East — Turkey-Israel, Turkey-Syria, the Gulf, and US-regional relations — are where I keep returning to test how the old assumptions hold up after the Arab Spring and the shifts that followed.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how Islamic political identities and nationalist imaginaries shape how states act abroad — across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Malaysia. The answers are less neat than most of the debates suggest.
Much of my published work has drawn on Turkey as a case for understanding identity, Islamism, and nationalism in foreign policy — from the liberal, EU-oriented moment of the early 2000s to the nationalist, security-driven politics of today.
I’ve been teaching for more than twenty years in leading universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States and Turkey. My teaching focuses on International Relations theory, identity politics, and international security, with a regional emphasis on the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia. Over that time I’ve built out a range of courses — from big introductory lectures to small seminars where I mostly try to get out of the way.