BATAS Council is the body that manages the association’s affairs. It consists of both elected and co-opted members, all of whom give their time voluntarily. The officers of BATAS (Chairperson, Treasurer, etc) are appointed by Council in accordance with the association’s constitution, and themselves serve on Council ex officio. Two of the elective positions on Council fall vacant every year, and elections take place at the AGM (held in late April or May). Members of BATAS who would like to serve on Council are encouraged to put themselves forward for election (details available from the Administrative Secretary).
Dr Çiǧdem Balım is a Distinguished Senior Researcher at Indiana University’s Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME), and a senior examiner for the International Baccalaureate Organization. She worked at Hacettepe University, and as the Chair of the Department of Foreign Language Teacher Education at Gazi University. Between 1988 – 2004 she was at the University of Manchester, where she served as the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and taught Turkish language and linguistics at BA and MA level. She has edited and contributed to eight books on Turkic Studies, has over fifty articles and book contributions. She lives in Manchester.
Dr Arın Bayraktaroğlu taught Turkish Language and Literature at Cambridge University (1977-1982) and worked as Co-Director of The Cambridge Centre for Languages (1982-2007). Her academic interests have been in Cultural Studies, Sociolinguistics, and Pragmatics. She has published books and articles in refereed journals. She also translated two of Irfan Orga’s books (Portrait of a Turkish Family and The Caravan Moves On) into Turkish, published by Everest Yayınları in 2009 and 2014 respectively. Presently she is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, and a Member of the Combination Room of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University.
Dr Brian Beeley read geography and anthropology at the University of Durham (BA -1956; PhD -1960, thesis on rural Malta). Then, following some economic research (The Economist) and planning experience (Turkish State Planning Organisation), he taught at universities in the US, Iran, and the UK, specialising where possible on the Middle East. After retirement in 2000 he acted as consultant to the Arab Open University and the Ethiopian Civil Service. He served as Co-editor of TAS Review from 2011 to 2018.
Polly Davies (Joint Administrative Secretary) has a BA from Oxford University in Turkish with Islamic Art and Archaeology. She subsequently trained and worked as a maritime lawyer for 5 years, often representing Turkish shipowners in Istanbul and Izmir. She then completed an MPhil in Social Anthropology, again at Oxford, writing a thesis on perceptions of higher education in Eastern Tajikistan and now works at Oxford University Press. She has travelled widely in Turkey and has translated Turkish language footage for documentaries shown on the BBC and al-Jazeerah.
Dr Candan Ertubey (Joint Administrative Secretary) is a psychologist with a PhD from the University of London. Her specialism is on Cross Cultural Psychology and her PhD is a comparative study between Turkish and British cultures. Candan collaborates nationally and internationally, to do research in education, health and workplace settings. She has published in the areas of culture and education, parent training, culture and health in industry and human potential and wellbeing. Candan has had a number of projects conducted with Turkish communities living in London, ranging from parent training to mentoring youth and professionals towards better job prospects in the UK.
Professor Yaprak Gürsoy is the Chair of Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to her current post, she was a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Aston University (2017-2021) and an Associate Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University (2009-2017). Professor Gürsoy works on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy from a comparative perspective. She is the author of Between Military Rule and Democracy: Regime Consolidation in Greece, Turkey, and Beyond (University of Michigan Press, 2017). Professor Gürsoy’s complete academic profile can be found on her personal website: www.yaprakgursoy.com.
Professor William Hale (Acting President) is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Political and International Studies at SOAS, and a former Professor with special reference to the politics of Turkey in the Department. He is the author of The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey (1981, repr.2015), Turkish Politics and the Military (1994), Turkish Foreign Policy 1774-2000 (2000, 3rd edn Turkish Foreign Policy since 1774, 2012), Turkey, the United States and Iraq ( 2006) and Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism, The Case of the AKP (co-authored with Ergun Özbudun, 2011) besides numerous articles on Turkey’s politics and foreign relations.
Dr Celia Kerslake (Chair) has a BA in Turkish and Arabic from Cambridge and a DPhil from Oxford. She had an academic career teaching Turkish language, literature and history at Edinburgh (1980-88) and Oxford (1988-2011). She is the joint author (with Aslı Göksel) of two Turkish grammars, one of which is currently in process of revision for a second edition.. She has been a regular visitor to Turkey (especially Istanbul) since the 1960s and has followed with great interest the enormous changes in Turkish society, culture and politics over that period.
Dr Natalie Martin (Public Relations Officer) is an alumnus of Modern Turkish Studies at SOAS and was a BBC journalist before doing a PhD in Turkey-EU relations at Loughborough University. She is now an assistant professor at the University of Nottingham. Her work focusses on Turkey-EU and democratisation processes including the news media. She is also looking at how disinformation is used to target the news media in Turkey and elsewhere. She is the author of numerous articles on Turkey and two monographs: Security and the Turkey-EU Accession Process: Norms, Reforms and the Cyprus Issue (2015) and The Securitisation of News in Turkey: Journalists as Terrorists? (2020).
Sigrid Martin-Wünscher (TAS Review Co-Editor) studied German & Politics at Göttingen (Germany) and Southampton universities, became a Lecturer in German at Kent University (1969) and was responsible for some 25 years for an MA Translation course which included Turkish as an option. Her own involvement with Turkey started with a Kent-Boğaziçi academic exchange, leading to her development of a course on Turkish authors writing in German.
Dr John Moreton (Treasurer and Acting Membership Secretary) originally graduated from Cambridge in Classical Archaeology and now has a PhD in Arabic-English translation from Leeds University, where he has also taught Turkish for Beginners since 2011. He has had active connections with Turkey, Cyprus and the Arab world since the 1970s, and over the years has lived or travelled in various parts of Turkey. He does Turkish-English translation work, is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and has been an active member of BATAS since 2014.
Dr Mina Toksöz is an Emerging Markets and Country Risk Consultant. She has worked in economic forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and as equity strategist for Emerging Europe and country risk manager in investment banking. Her current associations include an Honorary Lectureship at the University of Manchester Business School and an Associate Fellowship at Chatham House (RIIA). The analysis of the Turkish economy has always been a focus set in the context of her wider expertise on Emerging Markets. She has a DPhil in Economics from Sussex University, and a BA from Bosphorus University. Her book The Economist Guide to Country Risk was published in November 2014.
Elif Toker-Turnalar (Joint Website Manager and Leader of Events Coordination Team) is a researcher, lecturer, public speaker and specialist in Political Communication, Turkish Politics and Public Relations. She has an MA from Boğaziçi University in Political Science and International Relations, where she completed her thesis on “The formal role of the military in political decision making: Egypt and Turkey”, and a BA from Middlesex University in Politics, History and TEFL. At present she holds a Lectureship post at Regent’s University, London. She is engaged with colleagues on a 10-year longitudinal study of digital literacy and the understanding of politics and news by young adults, with an emphasis on social media platforms, mainly Facebook. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305118803895
Dr Kübra Uygur (Joint Website Manager) is a social historian with an MA degree in Sociology from City University London and a PhD in History from the University of Birmingham. In her PhD research she focused on Armeno-Turkish print media of the nineteenth-century Ottoman world and explored the cultural identity of the Ottoman Armenians. Her research interests include post-colonial and public sphere theories, with a particular focus on the notions of cultural identity and hybridity of ethnic minorities, historical journalism and public opinion.
Professor Gareth Winrow (TAS Review Co-Editor) previously taught at Bosphorus University and Istanbul Bilgi University. A recipient of two NATO Research Fellowships and a US Institute of Peace Fellowship, he has written extensively on Turkish foreign policy. A member of Chatham House and a tutor in the Department for Continuing Education at Oxford University, his most recent publication is a social history titled Whispers Across Continents: In Search of the Robinsons (Amberley 2019). He received a scholarship to study Modern History at Keble College, Oxford University, and has an MA from Lancaster University and a Ph.D from Manchester University.
