Prof. Ahmet Sözen

Prof. Ahmet Sözen is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations, at the Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus. He is the founding Director of Cyprus Policy Center. During his PhD dissertation fieldwork – which was on the Cyprus inter-communal peace negotiations, he was granted one of the fifty 1997 Paul Harris Ambassadorial Peace Scholarships on International Conflict Resolution given on a world-wide competition by the International Rotary Foundation. Besides his university work, he was the founding Turkish Cypriot Co-Director of the UNDP funded program Cyprus 2015 which operated first under Interpeace and later became the first inter-communal think-tank called SeeD – Center for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development. He also served as the Research Director of SeeD. He is also active on the policy and advocacy fronts. His experience over the last twenty years as a peace activist includes peacebuilding and democratization processes, participation in the official Turkish Cypriot negotiation team in the UN-led official peace negotiations in Cyprus, active involvement in second-track peace and democratization initiatives, trainings in conflict resolution, mediation and peacebuilding and policy recommendations design. He has published extensively on the Cyprus conflict, peace processes and Turkish foreign policy, and has given dozens of invited speeches on conflict resolution (including two TED talks), the Cyprus conflict and Turkish foreign policy in various countries. He frequently appears on both local and Turkish media, as well as international media, such as Al-Jazeera, Euronews and BBC, where he comments on world events.