Ziya Meral

Ziya Meral is a UK based Turkish-British researcher and advisor. He specialises on global trends shaping defence and security, politics and foreign policies of Turkey and the Middle East, religion and violent conflict issues. He is a senior resident fellow at the UK Army's think-tank, the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research (CHACR)[1] based at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.[2] He was the founding director of the Centre on Religion and Global Affairs- a London, Accra and Beirut based initiative exploring impact of religions on global developments. He regularly gives talks, lectures and expert statements at leading academic, political, military and diplomatic institutions and conferences, including the UK House of Commons and House of Lords, the U.S. Congress, US State Department, NATO Defence College, EU Commission, UK FCDO and MoD and US Military Academy West Point.[3] During 2010–2011, he was a Joseph Crapa Fellow at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)- a federal body that produces policy proposals for the US government, researching on prevention of ethno-religious violence.[4] He is the co-lead of the Climate Change and (In)Security project, a joint initiative of CHACR and Reuben College, University of Oxford.[5] He is a Council Member of the British Institute at Ankara.[6]