Ahmet T. Kuru

Ahmet T. Kuru is an assistant professor of political science at San Diego State University. In 2008, he will be a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Center for Study of Democracy, Tolerance, and Religion at SIPA of Columbia University. Kuru received his PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2007, his dissertation, Dynamics of Secularism: State-Religion Relations in the United States, France, and Turkey, received the American Political Science Association Religion and Politics Sections Aaron Wildavsky Award for the best dissertation on religion and politics. Kuru is now completing a book manuscript based on the dissertation.

His publications include:

2008. Secularism, State Policies, and Muslims in Europe: Analyzing French Exceptionalism, Comparative Politics, forthcoming.

2007. Passive and Assertive Secularism: Historical Conditions, Ideological Struggles, and State Policies towards Religion, World Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4, pp. 568-594.

2006. Reinterpretation of Secularism in Turkey: The Case of the Justice and Development Party, in The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti, edited by M. Hakan Yavuz (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), pp. 136-159.

2005. Globalization and Diversification of Islamic Movements: Three Turkish Cases, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 120, No. 2, pp. 253-274.