Nihat Celik is a lecturer in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. He received his doctorate in International Relations from Kadir Has University. His research areas are Middle East Studies, Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, the History of the Ottoman Empire, and Civil Society. Celik’s PhD dissertation elaborated on the status of Turkey as a middle power from a structural realist perspective and showed the strengths and weaknesses of Turkey and the limits of its foreign policy by using case studies of conflict resolution attempts in the Middle East and the Balkans. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and is currently working on an article on bar associations in Turkey and their confrontations with the government regarding human rights, the rule of law, and women’s rights. Celik is also working on a book manuscript on the role of sultans and bureaucratic structures concerning foreign policy decision-making processes, focusing on the 18th and 19th century consultation councils in the Ottoman Empire and using published and unpublished documents from the Ottoman archives.
Select publications
- (2017) “Border Crossings Between Georgia and Turkey: The Sarp Land Border Gate,” Geopolitics, Vol.22, No.2, pp: 383-406 (with Sule Toktas).
- (2016) “Islamically Oriented Humanitarian NGOs in Turkey: AKP Foreign Policy Parallelism,” Turkish Studies, Vol.17, No.3, pp: 429-448 (with Emre İşeri).
- (2015) “Turkey’s Regional Powerhood Within the Middle East Regional (In)Security Complex: Transformation from a Conflict-Ridden Environment into a Security Community?” Journal of Regional Security, Vol.10, No.2, pp:155-176 (with Oguz Dilek and Emre Iseri).
- (2011) “Muslims, Non-Muslims and Foreign Relations: Ottoman Diplomacy,” International Review of Turkish Studies, 2011, Vol.1, No. 3, pp: 8-27.
Talks and Presentations
- “To Declare War or Not: Foreign-policy Decision-making in the Ottoman Empire.” The Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Denver/Colorado, December 1-4, 2022.
- “Populism and Turkey: Domestic and Foreign Dimensions.” The Middle East and Islamic Studies Institute, George Mason University, April 8, 2021.
- “Poverty as a Test of Faith: The AKP’s Changing Discourse on Poverty and Islam.” Authoritarianism, State, and Society in Modern Turkey. The University of Southern California, April 7, 2021.
ncelikpols@gmail.com
ncelik@sdsu.edu
https://sdsu.academia.edu/NihatCelik
