RESEARCH INTERESTS
Political Behavior
International Organizations International Political Economy European Politics Foreign Aid FELLOWSHIPS and AWARDS2021-2022 The Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation (AvH), Germany
WZB Berlin Social Science Center & University of Münster- Visiting Fellow 2020 Young Scientist Award (BAGEP), Science Academy, Turkey 2018 TUSIAD & Stiftung Mercator Turkey Europe Future Forum Fellow |
EDUCATION
2004 - 2012
University of Massachusetts Amherst MA and PhD in Political Science. 1999 - 2004 Sabanci University, Istanbul BA in Social and Political Science (Full Scholarship) 1991 - 1999 Istanbul Erkek Lisesi |
MY LATEST RESEARCH
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My primary research areas include 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 When to not Respond in Kind? Individuals' Expectations of the Future and Support for Reciprocity in Foreign Policy This paper, recently 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. Social Media Effects on Public Trust in the EU This paper, published in Public Opinion Quarterly, scrutinizes the effect of social media use on institutional trust in the European Union (EU) among European citizens. Fixed-effects regression models on data from the Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2019, the year of the most recent European Parliament (EP) elections, demonstrate that higher social media use is associated with lower trust in the EU. More importantly, social media usage habits exert particularly detrimental effects in regions with wider and faster internet connections. In such high-information environments, those who more frequently use online social networks, tend to trust those networks, and receive information on EU affairs from these networks have less faith in the EU compared to those in regions with lower-quality internet access. In contrast, in regions with lower broadband access, receiving EU information from social media fosters political trust. Loving Globalization: High-Growth Enterprises and Public Opinion on Globalization in Europe In this paper, published in European Union Politics, building upon the "new" new trade theory, I propose that the regional business demography plays a prominent role in shaping Europeans' preferences on globalization. Specifically, I argue, regional populations of high-growth enterprises (HGEs) that take advantage of internationalization and export opportunities drive positive attitudes on globalization, especially among the "losers" of import competition. Regression models on cross-sectional survey data from Eurobarometer surveys covering ten waves between 2015 and 2019 supplemented by a series of macro-level covariates establish that residents in regions with higher shares of HGEs are more likely to view globalization as an opportunity. More importantly, the positive association between regional HGE shares and support for globalization is particularly pronounced among lower-educated and lower-skilled individuals 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. Other than 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 a lot of board games. My personal favorites are Gloomhaven, Robinson Crusoe, Wingspan, Beyond the Sun, and Ark Nova. |