Soli Özel holds a BA in Economics from Bennington College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-1983). Mr Özel is currently a full time Professor at Kadir Has University. He is also a columnist at Habertürk Daily newspaper and an advisor to TÜSİAD (the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association). He was guest lecturer at Georgetown, Harvard, Tufts and other US universities, taught at UC Santa Cruz, SAIS, University of Washington, Hebrew University and held fellowships at Oxford, the EU Institute of Strategic Studies and is now a Fisher Family Fellow of the ‘Future of Diplomacy Program’ at the Belfer Center of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In Spring 2013 he was a Keyman fellow and a visiting lecturer at Northwestern University. Currently he is a Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Özel is a regular contributor to the German Marshall Fund’s web site’s on “Turkey” series. His work has been published in Internationale Politik, Journal of Democracy, Foreign Policy, International Security, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, The Guardian, Bitterlemons-International. He publishes regularly for l’Espresso magazine in Italy. He is on the board of directors of International Alert and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.