Ali Bakir is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. His work focuses on the strategic, geopolitical, security, and inter-regional trends and dynamics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Turkey’s foreign and defense policies, Turkey-Arab/Gulf ties, and Gulf security.

Currently, he is an assistant professor at Qatar University’s Ibn Khaldon Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. He is also a senior foreign-policy and security analyst and consultant with over fifteen years of professional experience working with senior officials, decisionmakers, and stakeholders for governmental, nongovernmental, and private-sector institutions.

Before joining Qatar University, he worked as a senior adviser at Qatar’s Embassy in Ankara, head of the Gulf Studies Unit at the Middle East Studies Center, senior researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies of the International Strategic Research Organization, and a researcher and senior editor at Aiwa Group for economy and defense.

Bakir is a prolific author and a distinguished TV commentator, with two hundred contributions annually including TV appearances, analyses, commentaries, news quotes, and policy papers. He writes extensively on the geopolitical and security trends in the Middle East. His analyses appear on distinguished platforms and think tanks in the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Italy, and the Arab world.

He has been featured as an expert by RAND, the Royal United Services Institute, Carnegie Endowment-MEC, Brookings-Doha, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, Middle East Institute, Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale, the Arab Gulf States Institute, Gulf International Forum, and Friedrich Naumann Foundation, among others.

Bakir holds a PhD in political science/international affairs from Beirut Arab University. He has written more than fifteen book chapters on Turkey and the Gulf countries. He is currently working on several projects concerning Turkey and Gulf security. Bakir had his education, fieldwork, and work experience in several countries, including Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Qatar.

Follow him on Twitter: @alibakeer