His project examines a central aspect of Turkey’s recent foreign policy and researches the growing importance of religion and identity in Turkey’s relations with the world. It also seeks to understand the extent to which Turkey resembles a Muslim protecting power.
Kerem Öktem is a professor of Southeast Europe and modern Turkey at the Centre for Southeast European Studies (CSEES) of the University of Graz, Austria. Öktem is a research fellow at the University of Oxford. He completed his PhD at the School of Geography, Oxford in 2006. Preceding his doctoral studies, he obtained an M.St. in modern Middle Eastern studies at the Faculty for Oriental Studies at Oxford in 2001, where he also teaches as an associate faculty member. Before moving to Oxford, he studied and worked in Germany in the field of urban studies.