About

I was born in Antalya, a once upon a time small Mediterranean town on the south coast of Asia Minor. After a somewhat uneventful childhood and early youth, as is the fate of any student in Turkey with high general aptitude, I found myself in an engineering program in Istanbul. As it turned out, I wasn't really interested in engineering, and tried to make the best of my college years by enjoying the vibrant cultural and political life in Istanbul. I was also enrolled in an art school for one academic year, which resulted in the realization that I didn't have an artist in me, and a still persisting strong interest in aesthetic theory. The "philosophy bug" got into me in those years and made me feel compelled to carry out a very drastic shift in my life: soon after completing my degree in Industrial Engineering, I moved to London to pursue an MA degree in Philosophy. I was admitted to back then Middlesex University's Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, which has now moved to another university in London after it's shameful and sad shut-down at Middlesex. This was my first encounter with academic philosophy, and Kant, in addition to a number post-Kantian figures such as Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida. I went back to Istanbul and started my PhD in philosophy at Bogazici University, in a more analytically-oriented program. After presenting my proposal to write a dissertation on Kant's theory of modality at Bogazici, a combination of personal and academic concerns drove me toward another dramatic twist: I had the irresistible chance to work with Paul Guyer at Penn's Philosophy Department and took that chance.