Kemal Inat

Kemal Inat was born in Hendek, Sakarya. He received his BA in International Relations from Ankara University in 1992 and his MA from University of Siegen in Germany in 1997. He completed his graduate education in Germany, earning his PhD in 2000 from Universität Gesamthochschule Siegen. His doctoral dissertation, titled “Türkische Nahostpolitik am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts” (Turkey’s Middle East Policy at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century), examined the evolving dynamics of Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East.

İnat has been a faculty member in the Department of International Relations, Sakarya University, since 1997. He was appointed Assistant Professor in 2001, promoted to Associate Professor in 2006, and attained the rank of Full Professor in 2011, all within the same department. Over the course of his academic career, İnat has held several key administrative positions at Sakarya University, including department chair, dean, and institute director. From 2010 to 2013, he served as Director of the Institute of Social Sciences, and in 2014, he briefly held the position of Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences. He also chaired the Department of International Relations on two separate occasions, first from 2013 to 2016 and later from 2018 to 2022. In addition, İnat was the founding director of the Sakarya University Middle East Institute, a role he held from 2013 to 2017.

Inat has published numerous articles on Middle East politics and Turkish foreign policy in Turkish. Inat is the editor and the main contributor of "Ortadoğu Yıllığı" (The Middle East Yearbook) published since 2005. Despite encountering numerous changes in publication houses over more than 20 years, including early volumes published by Nobel Akademik Yayıncılık (2005–2006), subsequent series with Küre Yayınları (2007–2009), Açılım Kitap (2010s), Kadim Yayınları (mid-2010s) and most recently Ortadoğu Yayınları (2020s), "Ortadoğu Yıllığı" has endured as one of the longest-serving annual publications in Turkey^[1]. Inat is also the editor of Türk Dış Politikası Yıllığı (Turkish Foreign Policy Annual) published since 2009 by SETA Publication. Added to these two annual, Inat's academic articles have been published in national and international peer-reviewed journals. These journals include Insight Turkey, Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Finanspolitik & Ekonomik Yorumlar, Bilgi and Demokrasi Platformu. He currently teaches as a professor on Middle East politics, Turkish foreign policy and international conflicts.^[2]

Inat has also led a research project supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK). The project, titled “Türkiye–İran İlişkilerinde Yazılı Kaynakların Yeri (1979–2015)” (The Role of Written Sources in Turkey–Iran Relations, 1979–2015), examined the production, circulation, and influence of written materials—such as official documents, memoirs, and academic works—in shaping bilateral relations between Turkey and Iran in the post-1979 period ^[3].

Inat has supervised a large number of doctoral dissertations in the field of International Relations, many of whose authors have gone on to pursue academic careers at Turkish universities. Among his former PhD students, Furkan Polat and Mustafa Şehmus Küpeli currently serve as faculty members at Bursa Technical University, while Abdullah Erboğa is affiliated with the National Defense University. Filiz Cicioğlu and Yıldırım Turan hold academic positions in the Department of International Relations at Sakarya University. Several other doctoral graduates under his supervision are members of the Middle East Institute at Sakarya University, where they contribute to research and graduate training on regional politics, security, and foreign policy.

His political commentaries appeared in Turkish dailies such as Star, and Sabah.^[4]