Senior Director, Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former member of the Turkish Parliament
Aykan Erdemir is the senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Erdemir is a former member of the Turkish Parliament (2011-2015), where he served on the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, EU Harmonization Committee, and the Ad Hoc Parliamentary Committee on the IT Sector and the Internet.
He is also a founding and former steering committee member of the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief, a drafter of, and signatory to, the Oslo Charter for Freedom of Religion or Belief (2014) as well as a signatory legislator to the London Declaration on Combating Antisemitism. He also serves as a member of the Anti-Defamation League’s Task Force on Middle East Minorities.
Dr. Erdemir holds a PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. He was a doctoral fellow at Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a research associate at the University of Oxford’s Center on Migration, Policy and Society.
He worked as faculty member at Bilkent University’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2015-2016) and Middle East Technical University’s Department of Sociology (2004-2011), where he also served as the Deputy Dean of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (2005-2011).
Dr. Erdemir has edited seven books, including Rethinking Global Migration: Practices, Policies, and Discourses in the European Neighbourhood (KORA) and Social Dynamics of Global Terrorism: Risk and Prevention Policies (IOS Press).
Although Turkey’s Erdogan is president of a NATO member country, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Hamas share a similar ideology, built on an anti-Western and anti-Semitic worldview.
Only a strong and coordinated response can deter the Turkish president from continuing to use Western nationals as pawns to advance his political agenda.
