Prof. Dr. Ahmet Kasım Han

Dr. Ahmet K. Han presently served as the Vice-Rector of İstanbul Aydin University, as well as member of Executive Committee and Advisor to the Board of Trustees. He also was a member of faculty at the Department of International Relations of School of Economics and Administrative Sciences of the same institution and adjunct professor of strategy at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the National Defense University of the Turkish Armed Forces. Previously, he served as Vice-Rector of Altinbas University where he also has served as Dean of Graduate Studies, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences and Chairman of the Department of International Relations. He has served as Advisor to the Rector and Advisor to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Kadir Has University. His previous academic experience encompasses serving as Director and Board Member of various Research centers on social, strategic and international studies and as member of faculty for Faculties of Economics, Communications and Administrative Sciences at Kadir Has, Istanbul and Istanbul Bilgi Universities. Dr. Han is the vice-chairman and Chairman of Academic Board of Turkish Democracy Foundation, Chairman of the Executive Committee of Ephesus Center for Social, Economic, Technological, Energy and Environmental Studies and member of the board of EDAM, a leading independent Turkish think-tank. He serves as an advisory board member for Turkish – American Business Council and World City İzmir Association which serves on promotion of İzmir as a center of city diplomacy in the Mediterranean basin. Formerly he has been a member of the advisory boards of the Archeology and Diplomacy chapter of the Turkish Archeology Council; Koç University Maritime Forum; Bahçeşehir University Maritime and Global Strategies Center as well as the School of Government and Leadership of the same institution.  He served as the Senior International Relations Advisor of the Turkish Exporters Assembly from 2003 to 2006. He has been academic advisor to Armed Forces Higher Command and Control College for Joint Operations where he also thought courses on strategic thinking and Middle East and has thought for NATO/COE-DAT and NATO/PfP Training Center in Turkey and abroad. He studied Economics-Finance, International Relations, Business, Strategy and Negotiation at Istanbul, Boğaziçi, Koç and Harvard Universities. In 2003 and later in 2015 he has been awarded “Young Leaders of Europe” and “Israel and Middle East Studies” fellowships by the Department of State of the United States of America and Tel Aviv University in Israel respectively. He has served as a visiting fellow in the Center for Syrian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (2011) and in the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern African Studies of Tel Aviv University (2014). He is the coordinator and selection committee member of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Turkey’s Political Leadership Excellency program for Young Leaders; a senior associate research fellow on Middle East and North Africa for Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale and a Turkey panel expert and member of trilateral strategic dialogue for German Marshall Fund of the United States. Dr. Han has been assigned as a NATO/ TOLA observer in Afghanistan twice in 2005 and 2010 and has testified before the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Dubrovnik in 2013 and the advisory committee of the U.S. Congress House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee in 2015. He has delivered his opinions in 300 international conferences, expert workshops and seminars organized by institutions, including,  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (Sweden); Heritage Foundation, (USA); Marine Corps University (USA); Heinrich Böll Stiftung and Frederich Ebert Stiftung, (Germany); PRIO and NUPI, (Norway) and Chatham House (United Kingdom), as a key note speaker, expert and discussant on topics involving global economy and strategy; Middle Eastern and Turkish politics and economics as well as geopolitics, energy and economics. He addressed Israel Trade Conference organized by Israeli Chamber of Commerce as an expert speaker in 2017; has lectured in U.S. Marine Corps University in 2015 and the Wilton Park Conferences in 2014. 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 and has hosted more than a thousand programs and written over two hundred op-eds for Turkish and international press including NTV, HaberTürk, Hürriyet, CNN International, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Nikkei, Ashai Shimbun ve The Economist. Han specializes in Turkish foreign policy, Middle East, Energy, strategic studies, strategic thinking, negotiations strategy and focuses on systemic change in international relations and assumed responsibility on high-level international second track panels on the resolution of diplomatic, energy, security, and strategic issues. Professionally he has held positions such as CEO, International Capital Markets Coordinator, Project Manager in companies operating in the private sector finance, commodities and construction sectors during his break from academic life and is still active in the finance, services, logistics, technology, pharmaceutical, agriculture, mining and production sectors as a board member, board advisor, and investment committee member in domestic and foreign companies.