Suha Bolukbasi
Professional affiliation
Wilson Center Projects
"Ethnic Nationalism and the Emergence of Civil Society in Turkey"
Full Biography
I am a native of Turkey, where I still live. I am teaching international relations at the university where I went for undergraduate study, located in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. My graduate study was at the University of Virginia, where I divided my attention between Soviet/East European issues (my M.A. thesis was on the now defunct GDR and its handling of the "German Question") and Middle Eastern politics (my Ph.D. thesis was on the Cyprus dispute and Turco-American relations). Upon taking up my current teaching post, I began teaching and researching Middle Eastern politics, Turkish foreign policy and, most recently, Transcaucasian and Central Asian politics. Of late I have become passionately interested in doing research on nationalism; I recently published a number of articles on Azerbaijani nationalism. My proposed Wilson Center project is an extension of my intellectual curiosity regarding theoretical trends in the study of nationalism. Having lived in Turkey for most of my adult life, I have been much influenced by socio-political events, including and especially the recent armed warware between insurgents and the security forces and the gradual emergence in Turkey of a civil society, more tolerant of ethno-cultural demands. I hope that my status as a relative newcomer to the field of the Kurdish question, and to research on nationalism, will enable me to examine issues from an unconventional perspective, offering new insights.
Education
Turkish Foreign Policy, Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Nationalism
Major Publications
- "Turkey and the Jockeying for Power between States in the Caspian Sea Basin," in The Caspian: Politics, Energy, Security, S. Akiner and A. Aldis eds. (Curzon Press, 2000)
- "Nation-Building in Azerbaijan: the Soviet Era," in Opting out of the Nation: Identity Politics in Central, South and West Asia, Erik Zürcher ed. (I. B. Tauris, 2000)
- "Behind the Turkish-Israeli Alliance: A Turkish View," Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 1999, pp. 101-115.