I was born and raised in Turkey. My father was a politician and an intellectual; with his influence, I started to grapple at an early age with questions about the gap in development between the Muslim world and the West.
Ahmet T. Kuru
Ahmet T. Kuru (PhD, University of Washington) is a professor of political science and the former director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State University. He was a postdoctoral scholar and the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion at Columbia University. Kuru is the author of award-winning Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge University Press). He is the co-editor (with Alfred Stepan) of Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Columbia University Press). Kuru’s works have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, and Turkish.