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. He is a scholar of comparative politics concerned about understanding and supporting peaceful, democratic and equitable development in Turkey and the world at large.
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 concept of pernicious polarization and argues that political depolarization and democratic remaking are twin processes that should go hand in hand (in joint work with Jennifer McCoy). He is in the process of completing a forthcoming book, Depolarizing Politics and Remaking Democracy (with J. McCoy, under contract with Princeton University Press).
Another strand of his work examines democratic erosion and how democratic opposition actors can overcome it. He highlights how democratic erosion is an interactive process that results from the actions, inactions and reactions of pro-autocracy and pro-democracy actors. He conceptualized and analyzes the peculiar uncertainties and the trade-offs between normal and extraordinary strategies that oppositions face while defending democracy.
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 Advisory Group to the Global Initiative on Polarization by the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT). 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, 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
