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Dr. İbrahim Kalın is the chief advisor to the Prime Minister of Turkey, a faculty member at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, and the founding-director of the SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research based in Ankara, Turkey. He received his B.A. in history from the University of Istanbul and his PhD from George Washington University in Washington, DC. As a broadly trained scholar of Islamic studies and comparative philosophy, he teaches courses on Islamic thought, history and culture; Islam-West relations; and Turkey. Dr. Kalın has published extensively on these subjects and has also contributed to several encyclopedias, including the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd Edition, Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.
*This article originally appeared in the Project Syndicate online on May 23, 2011.
As the Arab Spring enters its fourth month, it faces challenges but also presents opportunities. Despite setbacks in Libya, Yemen, and Syria, the democratic wave has already begun to change the Middle East’s political landscape.
