Özgür Olgun Erden

Academic Mentor: John Huber, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

Research Topic:

Troll-Politics and Digital Fascistization: AK-Trolls as the Enablers of AKP’s Authoritarian Regime in Turkey

Özgür Olgun Erden is a political sociologist focusing on Politics, Religion, Secularization, Right-Politics, Political Islam, Turkish Islamism, and AKP, as well as Culture, Discourse, and Contemporary Political Ideologies. Right after his undergraduate degree in Political Science and MA studies in Sociology, he completed his Doctoral Research in 2018 in Sociology at the Middle East Technical University (METU). During his PhD studies, Özgür worked as a research assistant in the Department of Sociology at METU. He has been working as a lecturer and research assistant at Usak University.

Özgür's research at Columbia Global Centers | Amman focuses on the relationships between authoritarian regimes, troll politics, and fascistization, studying political activism (e.g. trolls) in digital platforms, such as Twitter. Centering on a particular troll group and drawing on the data composed of tweets and hashtags in a certain period. The research aims to understand and explain how authoritarian regimes have reproduced themselves by leaning on the digital world and thereby using a variety of digital platforms, and in doing so, generating insights into authoritarian politics, fascistization, and troll politics.

Selected Publications:

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “Politicizing Death in the COVID-19 Outbreak: AKP, Necropolitics and Right-Authoritarianism in Turkey.” Javnost-The Public. (forthcoming in 2023). 

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “The AKP’s Electoral Strategy in the June 7 and the November 1 Popular Elections in Turkey: Religion as A Tool of Political Propaganda”, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Vol. 19, No. 57 (2020): 129-144. 

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey – A Hermeneutic Reconsideration”, Politics, Religion & Ideology, 21(3) (2020): 1-3. 

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “The New Religion-Based Work Ethic and Cultural Consumption Patterns of Religiously Conservative Groups in Turkey”, Religions, 10 (10) (2019): 2-14.  

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “How to Analyze Islamist Politics: Is it possible to make a Political Study without Sociology of Islam?”, International Journal of Political Theory, 3 (1) (2018): 1-15. 

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “J. G. Fichte as a Post-Kantian Philosopher and His Political Theory: A Return to Romanticism”, Journal of Ethics, Religion & Philosophy, 4 (1) (2018): 17-25 .

Erden, Özgür Olgun. “New Middle Classes, Religion and Politics: The Case of JDP and the New Political Vision of Politicized Islam for the Transforming Positions within Class Structure in Turkey”, European Perspective, 7 (1) (2015): 141-167.