Visiting Fellow Jun 2024 - Dec 2025
CATS Fellow Jun 2023 - May 2024
Dr Salim Çevik is a CATS fellow. He previously worked as CATS Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Prior to joining to SWP, he held research or teaching positions at Lund University (Sweden), Ipek University (Turkey), Bilgi University (Turkey) and Columbia University (USA). He earned his PhD degree in Political Science from Bilkent University (2015, Turkey).
His main area of research focusses on Turkish domestic politics and Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East and Africa.
CATS Fellow Sep 2025 - Aug 2026
Sinem Bal is a CATS Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). She is an Associate Professor of International Relations, specializing in refugee studies, human rights, social movements, gender and politics, European politics, and EU–Turkey relations. Bal holds a PhD in European Politics and International Relations from the Institute of European Studies at Marmara University, during which she spent two years as a TÜBİTAK Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen. After completing her PhD, she worked as a Tübitak postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham and the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) between 2019 and 2021, where she is now one of the co-directors. From January 2023 to December 2024, she contributed to the Horizon 2020-funded ADAPTED project on poverty eradication and development goals, hosted by Boğaziçi University. In December 2024, she received the Şirin Tekeli Award from Sabancı University’s Centre for Gender Studies, for her project called The Transformative Role of Women in Environmental Movements: A New Perspective on the Case of Turkey.
Visiting Fellow May 2025 - Dec 2025
CATS Fellow Mar 2022 - Jan 2023
Nebahat Tanrıverdi Yaşar was a CATS Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Studies (SWP) in-between Mar 2022 - Jan 2023, and an IPC-Stiftung Mercator Fellow at CATS in-between 2020 and 2021. She works as a freelance researcher.
Her main research areas include Turkish foreign policy, Turkey and the North African States, Turkey's policies towards the African States, Security and defence policy, transition processes in the region. She was a researcher in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM), a research center based in Ankara (2010-2015). Previously, she worked with PANAROMA, a foreign policy journal, FTN News Agency, and the UAE Embassy in Ankara.
Her research project at CATS examined the status of the economic, political, and social policies of Turkey and China in Africa and further explored the interactions between China and Turkey in Africa.