Professor Yaprak Gürsoy

Yaprak Gürsoy is Professor of European Politics and Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at LSE. Prior to joining the European Institute, she was a Senior Lecturer and the Undergraduate Programme Director of Politics and International Relations at Aston University. She was also a Senior Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford University and an Associate Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.

Yaprak completed her PhD in foreign affairs at the University of Virginia in 2008. Since then, she has worked on regime change and consolidation, democratization, civil-military relations, coups d’état, and the influence of the European Union on domestic politics. She has published extensively on these subjects, mainly focusing on Turkey in comparison with Greece and Southern Europe. Her research and publications were recognized in 2016 by the Turkish Science Academy with a Young Scientist Award (BAGEP), given to promising academics. In 2023, she was among the recipients of the Koç University Alumni Awards in the category of Achievement in the Academia. Yaprak is the author of The Transformation of Civil-Military Relations in Turkey (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2013, in Turkish) and Between Military Rule and Democracy: Regime Consolidation in Greece, Turkey, and Beyond (University of Michigan Press, 2017).

More recently, Yaprak’s project on Turkey-UK Relations was funded by the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA). This new area of research has led her to explore Turkish perceptions of the UK and the impact of emotions on international relations and politics.

Between 2018 and 2023, Yaprak was the co-founder and co-convener of the Turkish Politics Specialist Group in the Political Studies Association (PSA). Since 2019, she has served as a council member of the British Association for Turkish Area Studies (BATAS). In 2022 and 2024, she received an Excellence in Education Award by LSE.

As the Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at LSE, she continues to teach and research her main areas of interest, Turkey’s relations with the West and the UK, and Turkish politics in comparison with Europe.

Expertise

Regime Change, Democratization, Civil-Military Relations, Coups d’État, Southern Europe, Anglo-Turkish Relations