Murat is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Koç University in Istanbul. He teaches courses in Comparative Politics, Religion, Secularism and Democracy in the World, and Democracy and Authoritarianism in the 21 st Century. He published his research on democratization and autocratization, polarization, ethnic conflicts, religious and secular politics, political Islam, and the Kurdish question in books, book volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, the Middle East Journal and the Annals of the AAPSS. Among other visiting appointments, he was a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Modern Ethnic Conflicts at the University of Washington, Seattle, a Democracy and Development Fellow at Princeton University, and visiting scholar in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University. He holds a BA in Economics from BoğaziçiUniversity in Istanbul and an MA in Economics and a PhD in Political Economy and Public Policy from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Murat’s recent research has been focused on the causes, regime-related consequences and remedies of polarization as a political and relational process, and opposition strategies during polarization and autocratization. He is a frequent contributor to Turkish and international mass media.

MURAT SOMER