Ahmet Sözen is professor of Political Science and International Relations at Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU). Sözen received his BA degree in 1991 in English Language Education from Bogazici/Bosphorus University (İstanbul, Turkey), his MA in International Relations in 1993 from Syracuse University (USA) and his PhD in Political Science (International Relations) in 1999 from University of Missouri (USA).
He was the Provost (Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs) at EMU during 2014-16. He is also the founding Director of Cyprus Policy Center – a think tank within EMU. Besides his university work Prof. Sözen is the founding Turkish Cypriot Co-Director of the UNDP funded program Cyprus 2015 which operated first under Interpeace (established in 1994 by the United Nations to develop innovative solutions to build peace) and later became the first inter-communal think-tank called SeeD – Center for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development. Sözen is currently the Research Director of SeeD. During his PhD dissertation fieldwork – which was on the Cyprus inter-communal peace negotiations, Sözen was granted one of the fifty 1997 Paul Harris Ambassadorial Peace Scholarships on International Conflict Resolution given on a world-wide competition by International Rotary Foundation. Sözen’s current research interests include: conflict resolution, peace-building processes, governance in multi ethnic societies, the Cyprus conflict and negotiations, Turkish foreign policy and democratization processes.
Sözen has also been very active on the policy and advocacy fronts. His experience over the last twenty years as a peace-activist includes peace-building and democratization processes, including participating into peace-negotiations from the first-track in Cyprus where Sözen was a member of the official Turkish Cypriot negotiation team in the UN-led peace negotiations; active involvement in second-track peace and democratization initiatives; providing training and education in the areas of conflict resolution, mediation and peace-building; designing policy recommendations based on objective participatory research with the societal stakeholders and polling.
Prof. Sözen has given dozens of invited speeches on conflict resolution – including two TED talks (TEDxNicosia 2012 and TEDXEMUniversity 2014) and the Cyprus conflict in many different countries and he frequently appears on both local and Turkish media, as well as international media, such as BBC and Al Jazeera, where he comments on world events.