Professor Ahmet Kasim Han

Keynote Speaker

Speaker Profile

Prof. Han is a member of faculty at the Department of International Relations at İstanbul’s Altinbas University. Previously he has been a member of the Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences of Kadir Has University, where he was also the advisor to the Rector. He serves as a member of the board of EDAM, a leading independent think-tank. He is an adjunct professor of strategy for Turkish National Defense University Atatürk Strategic Research Institute.

Prof. Han is a Senior Associate Research Fellow on Middle East and North Africa for the l’Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI) in Milan and is an expert for and contributor to German Marshall Fund’s On Turkey Series as well as a member of GMF’s Turkey – US – EU Trilateral Strategy Group. He also worked with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in different capacities. Since 2017 Prof.

Han is a member of the advisory board of Koç University’s Maritime Forum (KUDENFOR), a research center focusing on maritime security and trade. He has been a visiting fellow in Center for Syrian Studies in University of St. Andrews, Scotland (2005) and in Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel (2014). He has been awarded a Young Leaders of Europe Scholarship from the US DoS (2003), and another by Tel Aviv University for his studies on Middle East and Israel (2015) and has been a NATO/ TOLA observer in Afghanistan twice in 2005 and 2010. Prof. Han has testified before the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Dubrovnik in 2013. He is a founding member of the International Relations Council of Turkey.

He is widely consulted and quoted by the international and domestic news outlets including CNN International, The Associated Press, CNBC, Al Jazeera, ITN, Deutsche Welle, ZDF, Al Arabiya, VoA, TRTWorld, The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Asahi Shimbun, Nikkei, Reuters, AP, The Economist, Der Spiegel, Paris Match, Channel News Asia and PBS. Previously, he was the director of the Research Center for Politics and International Relations at Istanbul University and Coordinator for Security Programs of TESEV and served as the International Relations Advisor for Turkish Exporters Assembly, the umbrella organization of Turkey’s exporting industries. Having worked as a C-Level executive for almost a decade, Prof.

Han has functioned as a member of board for several companies, and is working as an advisor/ consultant for multinational and domestic business interests, on issues pertaining to integrated analysis, forecasting and management of political and economic risk, governmental relations, M&A negotiations, strategy and business structuring and as part of dispute management teams, especially for financial, mining and industrial production as well as conglomerates. He also has participated with second track efforts on Eastern Mediterranean energy resources (Turkey, US, Cyprus, Norway, Germany, Israel); Iranian nuclear program and US, Iran, Pakistan relations within the Afghan context (USA, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, UK, RF, Sweden, Denmark); security and political economy of the future of the Middle East (Turkey, Germany, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE, Jordan) and has structured and led training and simulation programs for NATO’s Center of Excellence Defense Against Terrorism (COE-DAT) in different countries. Prof. Han has also worked on international projects on critical energy infrastructure security.

He is the founding partner of İstanbul Economics Research, a company with expertise on conventional and digital research, polling, data analysis, political and market strategy. His research interests focus on strategic and security studies, financial, economic security, Turkish foreign policy, Turkey’s domestic politics, Middle Eastern security and politics, energy security, great power strategies and the transformation of the international system. His work has been published in international scholarly journals and as book chapters, as well as policy analysis. He has been a keynote speaker in more than three hundred domestic and international conferences, seminars and meetings. Prof. Han has studied in İstanbul, Boğaziçi, Johns Hopkins, Koç, and Harvard Universities at BA, MA, Ph.D. and post-doctoral level degrees on economics, international relations, strategy, and negotiations.