Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School for a panel discussion on Turkey’s relations with the West and Russia. The panelists will include experts Fuat Keyman, Atlia Eralp, and Senem Aydin-Düzgit from the Istanbul Policy Center in Turkey. The conversation will be moderated by visiting scholar Özgür Özkan. Lunch will be served.

Turkish foreign policy is currently guided by the assumption that the international order has already entered a post-Western phase where maximum autonomy from Western norms and institutions should be attained. That is also reflected in Turkey’s relations with Russia, where it presents itself as a balancing actor that remains a NATO member while avoiding Western sanctions and fostering bilateral relations with Russia. The conversation will delve into the drivers behind Turkey’s quest for strategic autonomy, its implications for Turkey’s relations with Russia and the West, and possible future scenarios.

We encourage you to read in advance the following articles by the panelists on how Erdogan rules through crisis and authoritarian middle powers in the liberal world order. The event is open to the public. Please make sure to register via Eventbrite to attend the event in person. If you would like to attend via Zoom or submit discussion questions for the panelists in advance, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

	Senem Aydın-Düzgit is a Senior Scholar and the Research and Academic Affairs Coordinator at the Istanbul Policy Center and a Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Sabancı University. She was previously a Jean Monnet Chair of EU Political and Administrative Studies in the Department of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University. Her main research interests include European foreign policy, Turkish foreign policy, discourse studies, and politics of identity. 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. She is a member of the ECFR Council, a board member of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM), a member of the Global Relations Forum (GIF), and a member of the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network. She also serves as the Associate Editor of South European Society and Politics. She was awarded the Young Scientist Award by the Science Academy Society of Turkey (BAGEP) in 2014. She was admitted as a Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) at the beginning of 2020.
	Atila Eralp is a member of Mercator-IPC International Advisory Council. He was a Mercator-IPC Senior Fellow at IPC from 2019 to 2023. He is also an Emeritus Professor in Department of International Relations at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. He has been awarded the Jean Monnet Chair on Politics of European Integration since 2002. He has been the Coordinator of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence since 2007. He was selected as one of the twenty European Success Studies by the European Commission in 2008. His research interests include enlargement process, neighborhood policy, EU’s foreign and security policy, and the Turkey-EU relationship. Eralp has published numerous articles and books on these issues. Eralp has coordinated and implemented various interdisciplinary EU-funded research, training, and communication projects.
	Fuat Keyman is the Director of the Istanbul Policy Center, Vice President for Institutional Affairs and Social Impact, and Professor of International Relations at Sabancı University. Keyman is a leading political scientist in Turkey and an expert on globalization, democratization, international relations, Turkey–EU relations, Turkish foreign policy, and civil society development. He is a member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences. Keyman previously taught in the Department of International Relations at Koç University between 2002 and 2010, and in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University between 1994 and 2002. He was also Visiting Professor at Carleton University in the summer of 1997. Keyman holds several post-doctoral fellowships from Wellesley College and Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations and Comparative Politics from Carleton University. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.
	Özgür Özkan is a research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting scholar at The Fletcher School. He holds a Ph.D. in International Studies from the University of Washington, Seattle and an M.A. in Regional Security Studies (Russia-Eurasia) from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Before pursuing an academic career, he served as an officer in the Turkish army and NATO. Özgür’s research lies at the nexus of international security and comparative politics with a regional specialization in Turkey and the Middle East. Özgür is working on a book project based on his dissertation exploring officer recruitment and promotion patterns and their interaction in international and intrastate conflicts in Turkey since the late Ottoman period. Özgür published a book chapter and has several articles in the process of publication on the causes and consequences of the military’s representativeness and effectiveness. His policy-relevant research has appeared in Foreign Policy magazine and The Conversation.