Esin ABDULLAH

Bio

I am a doctoral researcher at CEVIPOL, Université libre de Bruxelles, and an F.R.S.-FNRS Research Fellow (Aspirant). I joined ULB in October 2026 to write my thesis on ruling elites and autocratization.

I came to Brussels from Istanbul, where I studied political science and international relations at Boğaziçi University. Alongside my studies, I spent a few years close to day-to-day politics: as a political advisor in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, as a politics editor at a digital news outlet, and as a government relations consultant. Watching power up close left me with the questions I still work on, mostly about how regimes that drift away from democracy actually hold together from the inside.

My research interests include comparative authoritarianism, autocratization and elite politics, with Turkey as the case I know best. Outside academia, I contribute to Progresif, a digital media platform that tries to bring political science to a wider audience. These days I am also getting to know Brussels and, slowly, my French.

CV

• Since October 2026: PhD researcher and F.R.S.-FNRS Research Fellow (Aspirant), CEVIPOL, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• March 2024 – March 2025: Government Relations Consultant, Corpera Consultancy, Istanbul, Turkey
• August 2023 – March 2024: Political Advisor, Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey
• April 2022 – July 2023: Politics Editor, Aposto Media & Technology, Istanbul, Turkey
• 2022 – 2025: MA in Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

Areas of research

• Comparative authoritarianism
• Autocratization
• Democratic backsliding
• Elite politics
• Authoritarian legitimation
• Political economy of authoritarianism
• Turkish politics

Research

Dissertation: Elite Configurations in Autocracies

Why do some episodes of autocratization become entrenched, while others can still be reversed? My dissertation looks for part of the answer inside the ruling elite. It asks how the way power is distributed and organised among elites affects both how durable autocratization becomes and how reversible it remains. The project combines a cross-national analysis of government elites with comparative case studies of Turkey, Hungary and Poland. It is supervised by Prof. Luca Tomini and funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS.

Alongside the PhD, I work on two papers on Turkey. The first draws on a nationwide survey to study how the regime builds legitimacy among citizens. The second, written with Fikret Adaman (Boğaziçi University), looks at techno-nationalist discourse around the defence industry and how it shapes public attitudes. Both grow out of my MA thesis on the political economy of authoritarianism in Turkey’s defence industry.