He is the Director of the Haydar Aliyev Center for Eurasian Studies and Professor of International Politics at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul, Türkiye. Previously, he worked at the Department of International Relations at the Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University and the Department of International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, as well as Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia, Virginia, in the United States. He successfully defended his dissertation on "A Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis of Weak States: The Case of the Caucasus States, 1991-1999" in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics, University of Virginia, in October 2008. He received an M.A. degree from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, and a B.A. degree from Istanbul University. In addition, he has published articles and book chapters mainly related to the Russia, Caucasus, and Central Asian regions.