About Me

I am a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, working on the ERC Consolidator Grant project COUNSTER. Before joining Bilkent, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (I-GMAP) at Binghamton University. I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at Binghamton University, SUNY, in 2025, where I also earned my M.A. in Political Science in 2022. I also hold an M.A. in Political Science from the Social Sciences University of Ankara (2021) and a B.A. in Political Science from Işık University (2016).

Current Position

COUNSTER examines how governments fight radicalization, insurgency, and terrorism by targeting the constituencies that non-state armed actors claim to represent, rather than relying on military force alone. The project develops a triadic framework of government, armed actor, and constituency, and studies both the attractive (concessions) and repressive strategies that governments direct toward these constituencies, along with the conditions under which those strategies succeed or fail.

Within the project, I am responsible for collecting data on the concessions and repression strategies that states employ toward constituencies. To build this data, I web-scrape large text corpora and use large language models to fine-tune local models that extract the relevant information from the text.

Research

My research focuses on contentious politics, coups, human rights, and state repression. Broadly, I study when and how leaders employ state apparatuses to repress opposition in authoritarian countries, combining quantitative methodologies with in-depth interviews and fieldwork.

My work has been published in Conflict Management and Peace Science and is forthcoming in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

My dissertation examines repression as a dynamic instrument of domination and a site of ongoing struggle between state leaders, bureaucrats, and society. It is organized into three essays:

• The first explores how different coup outcomes shape leaders’ repressive strategies, contrasting large-scale violence following successful coups with subtler but extensive repression after failed ones.

• The second investigates the micro-politics of authoritarian governance, showing how regimes use conflict zones to test and discipline provincial governors, thereby embedding repression within state institutions.

• The third develops a new methodological framework for building granular event datasets on repression, drawing on NGO human rights reports to capture who is targeted, by which institutions, and through which methods.

Research Interests

• Contentious Politics
• Coups and Regime Changes
• Human Rights
• State Repression
• Authoritarian Politics
• Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism

Academic Background

• Post-doctoral Researcher, ERC Project COUNSTER, Department of International Relations, Bilkent University (2026–)
• Post-doctoral Fellow, Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University (2025–2026)
• Research Assistant, Department of International Relations, Işık University (2018–2020)
• Ph.D. in Political Science, Binghamton University, SUNY (2025)
• M.A. in Political Science, Binghamton University, SUNY (2022)
• M.A. in Political Science, Social Sciences University of Ankara (2021)
• B.A. in Political Science, Işık University (2016)

Teaching Philosophy

My approach to teaching emphasizes critical thinking and engagement with real-world issues. I believe that political science education should equip students with the analytical tools to understand complex political phenomena. In my courses, I strive to foster an inclusive learning environment where diverse perspectives are valued.

Connect

I welcome collaboration opportunities and discussions about my research. Please feel free to contact me directly or connect with me on LinkedIn.

For more information about my work, please explore my research and teaching pages.