Research
I completed my M.A. thesis titled "The Role of Bureaucratic Purges in Shaping Public Service Provision" in the Political Science department at Sabancı University, advised by Assist. Prof. Fatih Serkant Adıgüzel. Below is its abstract and a link to download the full text:
"This thesis examines the impact of bureaucratic purges on public service provision, focusing on the Turkish government's dismissal of nearly 130,000 public employees between 2016 and 2018 following a failed coup attempt. Leveraging novel administrative data on each dismissed state employee, it begins with an analysis of the spatial and administrative distribution of the dismissals. The research primarily moves beyond canonical approaches that view purges as power consolidation through elite purges, and instead captures the broader societal impacts by assessing changes in the state's service delivery capacity post-purge. Using a difference-in-differences model to analyze how varying magnitudes of dismissals affect public teachers on students' standardized test performance, findings reveal a decrease in student performance at the district level, while similar analyses for police dismissals do not indicate crime rate changes. Overall, this study seeks higher external validity by moving beyond limited samples and inherent methodological constraints in prior work on bureaucratic capacity's impact on public services."
Working Projects
What’s in a Name? Naming Practices as Acts of Political Resistance
(with Asli Cansunar, Nela Mrchkovska, and Ramses Llobet)
Behind the Desk: What Becomes of Bureaucrats Who Plan Mass Violence?
Crisis in the Classroom: Analyzing the Role of Teacher Turnover in Shaping Educational Outcomes through Continuous Treatments
Teaching
I served as a teaching assistant at Sabancı University from 2022 to 2024, leading discussion sessions for the Humanity and Society course, with two sections each semester.
Fellowships
- Graduate School Fellowship, University of Washington (2024 – Present)
- Graduate School Fellowship, Sabancı University (2022 – 2024)
- Undergraduate Fellowship, Boğaziçi University Foundation (2017 – 2022)