Yasin Aktay (born 1966 in Siirt,

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

) is a deputy chairman of the

AK Party The Justice and Development Party ( tr, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, ; AKP), abbreviated officially AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democrat. It is one of the two major parties of contemporar ...

and head of the Turkish Group of Inter-Parliamentarian Union. He is also known as one of the chief aides to the Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician serving as the List of presidents of Turkey, 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Lis ...

. Before assuming this role, he served as a spokesman for the party. Aktay is fluent in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

. He was elected as the deputy of Siirt in the

25th Parliament of Turkey This is a list of Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the Grand National Assembly for the 25th Parliament of the Republic of Turkey at the June 2015 general election, which was held on 7 June 2015. Electoral districts are ordered in alphabetic ...

Academic career

Aktay got his Bachelor’s Degree in 1990, Master’s Degree in 1993 and PhD in 1997 from Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University at Ankara. In 1999 he became an Associate Professor in the field of Applied Sociology and in 2005 a Professor in the field of Sociology of Institutions. He spent 20 years as an academician at Selçuk University (Konya) where he started as a research assistant in 1992. He is now affiliated with and teaching in Ankara Yıldırım Bayazıt University, Department of Sociology. Aktay was teaching and doing researches at Utah University and University of Maine at Farmington between 2001-2004. He has been editing the Tezkire Journal of Social Science Thought and Politics that he founded with a group of his friends in 1991 and the Sivil Toplum Journal founded in 2002. He is also editorial member of the Journals Milel and Nihal and ReOrient: Critical Muslim Studies. Aktay managed a think-thank institute based in Ankara for four years: Institute for Strategic Thinking, where he is still an honorarium president. Aktay is a sociologist at Selçuk University in

Konya Konya () is a major city in central Turkey, on the southwestern edge of the Central Anatolian Plateau, and is the capital of Konya Province. During antiquity and into Seljuk times it was known as Iconium (), although the Seljuks also called it D ...

.Reuters, 2015
Arab Spring boosts political Islam, but which kind?
Accessed on 16 July 2020. He has authored several books related to

political Islam Political Islam is any interpretation of Islam as a source of political identity and action. It can refer to a wide range of individuals and/or groups who advocate the formation of state and society according to their understanding of Islamic pri ...

.He is left-handed.

References

1966 births Living people Justice and Development Party (Turkey) politicians Turkish people of Arab descent Turkish Arab people People from Siirt {{Turkey-politician-stub