Mustafa Aydın is Professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University (Istanbul), the President of the International Relations Council of Turkey, and the Coordinator of the Global Academy. He is a member of the European Leadership Network, the Greek Turkish Forum, and the European Academy of Art and Sciences. His areas of interest include international politics, foreign policy analysis, geopolitics of Eurasia, and Turkish politics and foreign policy.

Kerem Yıldırım is currently an assistant professor of political science at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. He received his PhD from Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2016. He previously taught at Kadir Has and Sabancı Universities in Istanbul. He was a postdoctoral associate in 2019– 2021 at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. His research interests include party– voter linkages, accountability, party competition, and political communication. His publications appeared in journals such as Political Communication, Political Behavior, Democratization, International Journal of Press/ Politics, Turkish Studies, South European Society and Politics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. He worked on issues such as varieties of political linkages, clientelism, political competition, and Turkish politics.