Karabekir Akkoyunlu

Karabekir Akkoyunlu is a scholar of comparative politics, whose research focuses on the actors and institutions that drive and resist democratisation, autocratisation and militarisation in the Global South. He explores this topic from an interregional perspective, through in-depth comparison of cases that are not typically compared, such as Brazil, Turkey, Iran and Indonesia. At LAC, he will continue his research on the instrumentalisation of environmental crises as a vehicle for stealth militarisation and democratic erosion in Brazil and Indonesia.

Karabekir currently serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Political Science, Federal University of Minas Gerais. Previously, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London, where he maintains a research affiliation. At SOAS he convened the post-graduate courses ‘Methodology in the Social Sciences’ and ‘State and Transformation in the Middle East’, and the undergraduate courses ‘Introduction to Comparative Politics’ and ‘Government and Politics of the Middle East’. He also taught at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), University of São Paulo (USP), University of Graz and the LSE, and was a visiting researcher at SEESOX, Oxford.

His recent publications include Contesting Autocratisation: Actors and Institutions of Democratic Resistance in a Global Perspective (Routledge 2025), Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey (Edinburgh University Press 2024), and After the stealth intervention: Civil-military relations and rule of law in post-Bolsonaro Brazil (Routledge 2025).

Karabekir has a PhD in Government from the LSE (2014), MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge (2007) and a BA in History from Brown University (2005).