About Me

Welcome! I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political Science of the University of Minnesota. I specialize in comparative politics and political methodology. 

In my doctoral dissertation, I ask about why and how do some businesses without government connections wield political influence over economic policies and public resources while others do not. I consider both sides' motivations and relative bargaining power while explaining the variations in government-business interactions. My research incorporates both large-N firm-level data and qualitative evidence. In this project, I focus on Turkey as the primary case and Russia and Malaysia as shadow cases. Besides my dissertation project, I am also interested in i) the electoral fortunes of corrupt politicians and ii) public opinion on FDI flows.

I am a first-generation student who grew up in Turkey. In line with my broader interest in the unexpected elite and non-elite supporters of populists and autocrats, I wrote an MA thesis on wealth inequality and right-wing populism. In this thesis, I compared the discursive strategies of Turkey’s AKP and India’s BJP.