Polarization, Depolarization, Democratic Remaking and Peace

Murat Somer is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ozyegin University, Istanbul, and will be an OSUN Senior Democracy and Development Fellow at the Democracy Institute, Central European University, Budapest in 2024-25. He is a scholar of comparative politics concerned about questions of peaceful, democratic and equitable development. One strand of his research is focused on comparative polarization, democratization and depolarization, distinguishing between pernicious and constructive versions of polarization. Another strand investigates democratic erosions and how democratic opposition actors can overcome them, with focus on the trade-offs between normal and extraordinary politics. A third strand has been examining ethnic, religious and secular dimensions of politics and conflicts, nation-states and state-nations, the links between secularism, democracy and “development”, and Turkey’s Kurdish Question. 

His recent publications include Polarizing Polities: A Global Threat to Democracy, (co-edited with Jennifer McCoy, 2019) and Return to Point Zero: The Turkish-Kurdish Question and How Politics and Ideas (Re-)Make Empires, Nations and States (2022). He is currently working on two monographs (with Jennifer McCoy), on how democracies can overcome pernicious polarization and democratic erosion.

Before joining Ozyegin, 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 Research Group on De- and Re-Democratization (DRD) at Central European University, Hungary, 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 advisor for civil society and political parties on issues related to democracy, polarization and rule of law in Turkey, and a frequent contributor to domestic 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 21^st 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
Ph. +90-216-564-9504
E-mail: murat.somer@ozyegin.edu.tr ;
murat.somer4@gmail.com