Bio

Ayşe Kadıoğlu is Professor of Political Science at Sabancı University since 1998.  She was the Acting President of Sabancı University (10.2016-1.2018) and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University (9.2013-10.2017).

She has a PhD in Political Science (1990, Boston University); M.A. in International Relations (1984, The University of Chicago); B.Sci. in Political Science (1982, Middle East Technical University).

Her research interests span from migration and citizenship studies, women and migration, comparative dynamics of new authoritarian regimes to comparative nationalisms, political ideologies, the intellectual origins of nationalism and liberalism in Turkey, as well as Turkish secularism. Her recent work examines the role of constitutions and laws in the consolidation of authoritarian regimes, particularly focusing on the notion of autocratic legalism. Additionally, she has been researching and writing the biographies of forgotten women of Istanbul against the historical background of the city at the turn of the twentieth century.

Most recently, she was a Senior Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute (2.2025-6.2025).  She was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies during the 2019-2020 academic year. She was  a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (1.2019-1.2020) and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (1.2018-1.2019). She has been a regular participant of Yale Law School’s ongoing annual Middle East Legal Studies Seminar since 2004. She is one of the Advisors for the online network Free Speech Debate. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Columbia University Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies. She served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Istanbul (2013-2018), member of the Executive Board of the Education Reform Initiative at Sabancı University (2013-2018), and member of the Executive Board of the Istanbul Policy Center, Stiftung Mercator Initiative (2016-2018) where she continues to be a Senior Scholar. She was a deputy member of the Board of Directors of the Hrant Dink Foundation in Istanbul (2011-2015). She has been the Chair of the International Hrant Dink Awards Committee since 2023. She was a Visiting Scholar and Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford University in 2005 and 2010. She was a member of the Advisory Board of Bucerius PhD Program in Migration Studies, Zeit Stiftung (2010-2013). She was a member of an Advisory Group of Council of Europe and co-authored a report titled Living Together: Combining Diversity and Freedom in 21st Century Europe.

She is the author of  numerous articles in the following journals: 

Middle East Journal, Middle Eastern Politics, International Migration, Muslim World, Citizenship Studies, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Middle East Law and Governance, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Social Research: An International Quarterly, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, Women’s History Review.

She is the author and/or editor of the following books:

Cumhuriyet İradesi-Demokrasi Muhakemesi: Türkiye’de Demokratik Açılım Arayışları (Republican Will-Democratic Reason: Search for a Democratic Disclosure in Turkey), (Istanbul: Metis, 1999).

Zaman Lekesi (Time Stain), (Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2006).

(author and editor) Vatandaşlığın Dönüşümü: Üyelikten Haklara (Transformation of Citizenship: From Membership to Rights), (Istanbul: Metis, 2008, second edition 2012, third edition 2022).

(co-editor with Fuat Keyman) Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2011).

(co-editor with Kerem Öktem and Mehmet Karlı) Another Empire? A Decade of Turkey’s Foreign Policy Under the Justice and Development Party (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2012).

Selected/recent academic journal articles, book chapters:

(List of all her publications -classified by type and year- can be reached at  Writing).

• “Reversing the Gaze: Tentative Lessons from and for Europe,” (Epilogue), co-authored with Kalypso Nicolaidis, in Olivier Yasar de France et al. (eds), Reversing Europe’s Gaze: Perceptions of Power and the Power of Perceptions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2026).

• “Writing to exist: Mes’adet Bedirhan’s pleas for Ottoman women,” Women’s History Review, 34/1, 2025, pp. 158-177.

• “Imperious Nationalism in New Turkey: Foreign Policy Discourses in the AKP’s Electoral Manifestos,” (co-authored with Bengi R. Cengiz) in Alpaslan Özerdem and Ahmet Erdi Öztürk (eds), A Companion to Modern Turkey’s Centennial: Political, Sociological, Economic and Institutional Transformations since 1923 (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

• “Leaving a Life Behind: Eliza Binemeciyan’s Encounter with ‘the Banality of Evil,'” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 28/1, 2021, pp. 3-33.

• “Autocratic Legalism in New Turkey,” Social Research: An International Quarterly, 88/2, Summer 2021, pp. 445-471.

• “Reading John Stuart Mill in Turkey in 2017,” Middle East Law and Governance, 10/2, 2018, pp. 203-232.

Ayse Kadioglu T24 Blog for opinion pieces.

Ayse Kadioglu YouTube channel for selected talks/lectures.

Ayse Kadioglu Sabanci University website.