IMAI Kohei

IMAI Kohei

IMAI Kohei
[Belonging・Position] Overseas Research Fellow(Ankara, Turkey)
[Research Field] Turkish Studies, International Relations, International Relations of the Middle East
[email] Kohei_Imai E-mail
Profile Information (Research history, education, papers & publications)

Previous research

I have studied Turkey’s diplomacy based on theoretical approaches in international relations. In particular, I have examined diplomacy conducted by the Justice and Development Party, which has been in power since 2002. Specifically, I have focused on the influence of two individuals, former foreign affairs minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who clarified the diplomatic principles of the Justice and Development Party, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who served as prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and has been the president since 2014. I have always done my best to elevate my research on Turkey to the level of high-quality regional research so that I can contribute to the advancement of the field of international relations theory.

Current research projects

Basically, my research examines Turkey’s diplomacy based on international relations theory. However, because Turkey’s diplomacy is frequently influenced by domestic affairs, especially in the 2010s, I try to incorporate wider perspectives (i.e., knowledge from comparative politics as well as international relations) in my research and investigate three topics: (1) the decline of democracy in Turkey, (2) nonstate actors in the Middle East such as Kurdish political organizations, and (3) the Turkish government’s measures for dealing with Syrian refugees and the Turkish people’s view of them. I am also interested in the involvement of Turkey and other major Middle Eastern countries in efforts to establish regional order and the limitations thereof.