On Monday 8^th October 2007 Professor Kemal Kirisci ( Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul) presented a lecture at CAIS. The lecture was entitled:

Turkish Foreign Policy in Turbulent Times

Today, Turkey is caught between two sets of challenges. The first set includes the typical conventional challenges that relate to national security, territorial integrity and political stability. The second set of challenges has to do with maintaining the pace of political reform, gaining access to markets, ensuring economic stability and growth in the region, as well as securing energy supplies. Above all, but closely related to these challenges, is of course the ultimate challenge for Turkey: EU membership.

How will Turkey respond to these challenges? What are Turkey's immediate foreign policy concerns and options? What are the new patterns of Turkish foreign policy making and behaviour? Can Turkey indeed play the role of a model for the region's transformation towards democratisation and engineer an 'intercivilisational dialogue'?

Professor Kemal Kirisci is professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration and is also the director of the Center for European Studies at the university.  He received his PhD at City University in London in 1986. His areas of research interest include European integration, asylum, border management and immigration issues in the European Union, EU-Turkish relations, Middle Eastern politics, ethnic conflicts, and refugee movements. He has previously taught at universities in Britain, Switzerland and the United States.

His books include: Turkey In World Politics: An Emerging Multi-Regional Power (co-edited with B. Rubin) (London: Lynne Reinner, 2001); The Political Economy of Cooperation in the Middle East (co-authored) (London: Routledge, 1998); Turkey and the Kurdish Question: An Example of a Trans-State Ethnic Conflict (co-authored) (London: Frank Cass, 1997); and The PLO and World Politics, (London: Frances Pinters, 1986). Prof Kirisci has also published numerous articles and chapters on identity issues, Turkish foreign policy, EU-Turkish relations, and refugee movements in academic journals and edited books.