Professor of Political Science and International Relations
Welcome to Professor Murat Somer’s Homepage
Polarization, Depolarization, Democratic Remaking and Peace
Murat Somer is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ozyegin University, Istanbul, and an expert on comparative polarization, democratization and depolarization, democratic erosion, recovery, and opposition behaviour, religious and secular politics, ethnic conflicts and the Kurdish Question.
One strand of his research and writings investigates comparative polarization, depolarization, and democratization. By distinguishing between harmful and constructive versions of polarization and polarizing politics, he developed the concepts of pernicious polarization, transformative repolarization and active and passive strategies of depolarization (in joint work with Jennifer McCoy). His forthcoming book, How to Depolarize Democracies: Choice, Courage and Politics Today (with J. McCoy, Princeton University Press) puts forward a theory of how contemporary democracies can overcome pernicious polarization and democratic backsliding.
Another strand of his work examines democratic erosion and how democracy defenders, democratic oppositions in particular can overcome it. He highlights how democratic erosion is an interactive process that results from the actions, inactions and reactions of both pro-autocracy and pro-democracy actors. Conceptualizing the peculiar uncertainties and the trade-offs between normal and extraordinary politics that arise during democratic backsliding, he maintains (in joint work with J. McCoy and others) that democratic erosion weakens defenders of democracy by dividing them into alarmists, cautioners and strategic alarmists.
A third strand of Somer’s research studies ethnic, religious and secular dimensions of politics and conflicts. He investigates nation-states and state-nations, the links between secularism, democracy and “development”, and among other conflicts Turkey’s Kurdish Question.
Before joining Ozyegin University, he served as Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at Koç University, Istanbul, and held visiting appointments such as Democracy and Development fellow at Princeton University, Senior Visiting Scholar at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies, visiting scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar and lecturer in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.
He is a member of the international Democratic Erosion cross-university research and teaching collaboration at Brown University, and of the Advisory Group for the Global Initiative on Polarization and Depolarization Community of Practice of the Institute for Integrated Transitions based in Barcelona, Spain. He has been an active volunteer, participant and informal advisor for civil society and political parties on issues related to democracy, polarization and rule of law in Turkey. He has been a frequent contributor to Turkish and international media including CNN International, Washington Post, New York Times, Euronews and Deutsche Welle.
Somer teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Comparative Politics, International Political Economy, Authoritarianism and Democracy in the 21st Century, Religion and Secularism in the World, and History and Politics of Modern Turkey.
A former Mellon post-doctoral fellow on modern ethnic conflicts at the University of Washington in Seattle, Murat Somer holds a BA in Economics from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, and an MA in Economics and a PhD in Political Economy and Public Policy from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Contact: Özyeğin University, Faculty of Social Sciences Nişantepe Mah. Çekmeköy, 34794 Istanbul Turkiye Ozyegin University Office: Social Sciences Bldg AB2 274 E-mail: murat.somer@ozyegin.edu.tr ; murat.somer4@gmail.com
