Sinan Ülgen

Sinan Ülgen graduated in 1987 from the University of Virginia with a double major in Computer Sciences and Economics. He undertook graduate studies at the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium where he received a master’s degree in European Economic Integration in 1990. He then joined the Turkish Foreign Service as a career diplomat.  In 1992, he was posted to the Turkish Permanent Delegation to the European Union in Brussels where he became part of the team that negotiated the Turkey-EU customs union. Ulgen is the founder and managing partner of Istanbul Economics, a consultancy group that specializes in market entry strategies for international companies, political and economic risk analysis related to Turkey and regulatory affairs. Ulgen is also the chairman of the Istanbul based think tank, Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. His research and opinion pieces have been published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for European Policy Studies, the Center for European Reform, the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund, Brookings and the World Economic Forum as well as newspapers such as Le Figaro, Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, European Voice, Project Syndicate and the International Herald Tribune. He is also co-author of a book on Turkey-EU relations with Kemal Dervis and a frequent commentator on Turkish affairs in the international press. Ulgen is a member of the Global Council on Europe of the World Economic Forum, an academic advisory board member of the NATO Defence College in Rome and a member of the International Policy Experts Group setup by NATO Secretary General Rasmussen.