BATAS Council is the body that manages the association’s affairs. It consists of both elected and co-opted members, all of whom give their time voluntarily. The officers of BATAS (Chairperson, Treasurer, etc) are appointed by Council in accordance with the association’s constitution, and themselves serve on Council ex officio. Two of the elective positions on Council fall vacant every year, and elections take place at the AGM (held in late April or May). Members of BATAS who would like to serve on Council are encouraged to put themselves forward for election (details available from the Administrative Secretary).
Dr Çiǧdem Balım is a Distinguished Senior Researcher at Indiana University’s Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME), and a senior examiner for the International Baccalaureate Organization. She worked at Hacettepe University, and as the Chair of the Department of Foreign Language Teacher Education at Gazi University. Between 1988 – 2004 she was at the University of Manchester, where she served as the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and taught Turkish language and linguistics at BA and MA level. She has edited and contributed to eight books on Turkic Studies, has over fifty articles and book contributions. She lives in Manchester.
Polly Davies (Joint Administrative Secretary) has a BA from Oxford University in Turkish with Islamic Art and Archaeology. She subsequently trained and worked as a maritime lawyer for 5 years, often representing Turkish shipowners in Istanbul and Izmir. She then completed an MPhil in Social Anthropology, again at Oxford, writing a thesis on perceptions of higher education in Eastern Tajikistan and now works at Oxford University Press. She has travelled widely in Turkey and has translated Turkish language footage for documentaries shown on the BBC and al-Jazeerah.
Professor Yaprak Gürsoy is the Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to her current post, she was a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Aston University (2017-2021) and an Associate Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University (2009-2017). Professor Gürsoy works on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy from a comparative perspective. She is the author of Between Military Rule and Democracy: Regime Consolidation in Greece, Turkey, and Beyond (University of Michigan Press, 2017). Professor Gürsoy’s complete academic profile can be found on her personal website: www.yaprakgursoy.com.
Professor William Hale (Acting President) is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Political and International Studies at SOAS, and a former Professor with special reference to the politics of Turkey in the Department. He is the author of The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey (1981, repr.2015), Turkish Politics and the Military (1994), Turkish Foreign Policy 1774-2000 (2000, 3rd edn Turkish Foreign Policy since 1774, 2012), Turkey, the United States and Iraq ( 2006) and Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism, The Case of the AKP (co-authored with Ergun Özbudun, 2011) besides numerous articles on Turkey’s politics and foreign relations.
Dr Natalie Martin (Public Relations Officer) is an alumnus of Modern Turkish Studies at SOAS and was a BBC journalist before doing a PhD in Turkey-EU relations at Loughborough University. She is now an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham. Her work focusses on Turkey-EU and democratisation processes including the news media. She is also looking at how disinformation is used to target the news media in Turkey and elsewhere. She is the author of numerous articles on Turkey and two monographs: Security and the Turkey-EU Accession Process: Norms, Reforms and the Cyprus Issue (2015) and The Securitisation of News in Turkey: Journalists as Terrorists? (2020).
Sigrid Martin-Wünscher (TAS Review Co-Editor) studied German & Politics at Göttingen (Germany) and Southampton universities, became a Lecturer in German at Kent University (1969) and was responsible for some 25 years for an MA Translation course which included Turkish as an option. Her own involvement with Turkey started with a Kent-Boğaziçi academic exchange, leading to her development of a course on Turkish authors writing in German.
Elif Toker-Turnalar (Joint Website Manager and Leader of Events Coordination Team) is a researcher, lecturer, public speaker and specialist in Political Communication, Turkish Politics and Public Relations. She has an MA from Boğaziçi University in Political Science and International Relations, where she completed her thesis on “The formal role of the military in political decision making: Egypt and Turkey”, and a BA from Middlesex University in Politics, History and TEFL. At present she holds a Lectureship post at Regent’s University, London. She is engaged with colleagues on a 10-year longitudinal study of digital literacy and the understanding of politics and news by young adults, with an emphasis on social media platforms, mainly Facebook. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305118803895
