Carnegie Middle East Center
Balci was a nonresident scholar in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, where his research focuses on Turkey and Turkish foreign policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Bayram Balci is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Bayram Balci was a nonresident scholar in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, where his research focuses on Turkey and Turkish foreign policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus. He is also affiliated with CERI Sciences Po, in Paris, France.
As a research fellow at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies in Istanbul, Turkey, Balci established the institute’s office in Baku, Azerbaijan. During his four-year mission, he studied the features and interactions of Shia and Sunni Islam in Azerbaijan and its relations with Iran. From 2006 to 2010, he was the director of the French Institute for Central Asian Studies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. During his time in the region, his research also examined Turkey’s influence and the Islamic revival in Central Asia.
He is a founding member of the European Journal of Turkish Studies, member of the editorial board of Les Cahiers d’Asie Centrale, a French journal dedicated to Central Asian studies.
He is the author of Missionnaires de l'Islam en Asie centrale: Les écoles turques de Fethullah Gülen (Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003) and recently co-edited China and India in Central Asia: A New “Great Game”? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Syria is clearly an area where Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is dangerously exposed, at a time when he is already facing growing internal pressure.
The question of the extent and duration of Turkish support for jihadist factions opposing the Syrian regime has been a sensitive issue for some time.
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