Her project focuses on democracy and the role of civil society organizations in Turkey within the general framework of EU-Turkey relations.
Özlem Topçu is a political editor who has worked for the German weekly DIE ZEIT since 2009. Since the beginning of the Gezi Park protests, she has begun to observe and cover Turkish politics more intensely. She has interviewed several representatives of Turkish politics and government (e.g. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Selahattin Demirtaş, etc.).Topçu has focused on the Kurdish movement and the “peace process” in her journalistic work. She obtained an M.A. in Near Eastern studies and political science and graduated from the Axel Springer School of Journalism.