Dr. Yilmaz has eighteen years of theoretical and hands-on experience in security,
counterterrorism and socio-political analysis. He has worked collaboratively with security
professionals, sociologists and anthropologists to do fieldwork in various topics related to
security, which include radicalization/de-radicalization/rehabilitation of individuals from
terrorist groups, policy analyses on legal aspects of governments’ counterterrorism practices
and political risk analysis.
He has taught undergraduate and graduate students in counterterrorism, international politics,
discourse analysis and research methods, based both on theory and practice. He has also
trained security professionals and local government officials on protection of critical
infrastructures, emergency management and counterterrorism.
In addition to numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, he has published a book entitled
“Disengaging from Terrorism: Lessons from the Turkish Penitents” (Routledge 2014), which has
been reviewed as being one of the most innovative books on terrorism and political violence.
Yilmaz holds a PhD in applied (political) anthropology from Columbia University (2012). He also
holds a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of CRJ in New York and three
Master’s degrees from Columbia University in the fields of International Affairs, Political
Anthropology and Applied Anthropology. He worked at various international organizations such
as the United Nations (UN) in New York and Beirut, and the Southeast European Law
Enforcement Center (SELEC) in Bucharest, Romania. He is interested in Computational Social
Science and his research interests include political violence, anthropology of terrorism,
radicalization and deradicalization processes related to terrorism, identity politics, elite
formation and circulation, as well as international security and relations.
