Middle Power Strategies: Turkey and India between the Great Powers

Dr Seçkin Köstem is an associate professor of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Currently, he serves as department chair. He specializes in International Political Economy with a specific focus on geoeconomics, economic statecraft and multilateral development finance. In terms of regional expertise, he has published on Turkey, Russia and the post-Soviet space. His research has been published in journals such as Review of International Political Economy, Foreign Policy Analysis, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Globalizations, Global Policy, Third World Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies and other outlets.

Dr Mukherjee’s research focuses on rising powers and how they navigate the power and status hierarchies of international order. His book, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions (Cambridge University Press) received the 2024 T.V. Paul Best Book in Global International Relations Award from the International Studies Association (ISA), the 2023 Hedley Bull Prize from the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the 2023 Hague Journal of Diplomacy Book Award. His regional focus is on the Asia-Pacific, particularly how major powers such as India, China, the United States, and Japan, and smaller states in South and Southeast Asia, manage the regional effects of global transitions.

His research has been published in journals such as International Affairs, Global Studies Quarterly, Contemporary Politics, Survival, Global Governance, Asian Security and International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, as well as in edited volumes from academic presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, University of North Carolina, and Brookings. He has also co-edited a policy-focused volume, published by Oxford University Press, that brought together top scholars and analysts across generations from Japan and India to chart the future course of bilateral relations.

Prior to LSE, he was Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. He received his PhD from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He holds an MPA in International Development from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford. He is a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., and a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research in Washington, D.C.

Dr Buğra Süsler is an associate professor in International Relations at the University College London (UCL) Political Science Department and the deputy director of the UCL Global Governance Institute. He is also the head of Turkey and the World programme at LSE IDEAS. His research expertise includes foreign policy analysis, emerging powers, and international conflict and cooperation. He is the author of Turkey, the EU, and the Middle East: Foreign Policy Cooperation and the Arab Uprisings (Routledge 2020).

Dr Sumitha Narayanan Kutty is a geopolitics and international security expert passionate about strategic decision-making in a contested world. She is currently affiliated with the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS) at King’s College London, where she also teaches in the War Studies and Defence Studies departments. She was a Leverhulme Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellow at KCL War Studies (2020-25) and a research fellow in the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at RSIS Singapore before that. Her academic work focuses on security, foreign policy and rising powers with an empirical lens on India, the Middle East and Indo-Pacific including extensive fieldwork across these regions. Her PhD investigated Indian military interventionism through the lens of experiential learning—governmental, organisational and leadership—using elite interviews and archival research. Sumitha is the co-editor of India and Japan: Assessing the Strategic Partnership, has published in peer-reviewed journals such as International Studies Quarterly, International Politics, The Washington Quarterly and Asia Policy with expert commentary featured on Bloomberg, Channel News Asia, Lawfare, 9DashLine, The Diplomat, South Asian Voices, The Hindu and Hindustan Times. She holds multiple degrees in journalism from India, a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown University, USA and a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London.

Professor Chris Alden teaches International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he is Deputy Head of the Department (PhD and Research). He is also Director of LSE IDEAS. He is a Research Associate with South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).

He is author/co-author of numerous books, including Apartheid’s Last Stand – the Rise and Fall of the South African Security State (Palgrave 1996), Mozambique and the Construction of the New African State (Palgrave 2003), South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Foreign Policy (Adelphi Paper IISS 2003), China in Africa (Zed 2007), Land, Liberation and Compromise in Southern Africa (Palgrave/Macmillan 2009) The South and World Politics (Palgrave 2010), Foreign Policy Analysis – New Approaches 2^nd edition (Routledge 2017), China and Latin America - Development, Agency and Geopolitics (Bloomsbury 2023) and co-editor of China and Mozambique: from Comrades to Capitalist (Johannesburg: Jacana 2014), China Returns to Africa (Hurst 2008), China and Africa – Building Peace and Security Cooperation on the Continent (Palgrave 2017), New Directions in Africa-China Studies (Routledge 2019) as well as having written numerous articles in internationally recognised journals.

Professor Alden has held fellowships at Cambridge University, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo; Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto; Ecole Normale Superieure (Cachan), Paris; CERI, Paris; and University of Pretoria.