ASBEN Blog

Greetings from Yogyakarta / Indonesia,   I am Tufan Kutay Boran. I completed my undergraduate degree in International Relations at Gazi University and my master's degree in International Relations at Selcuk University. At the moment, I am conducting my Ph.D. studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada in the department of government and politics since September/2019. My research is about the role of Islamic political parties and interest groups in Indonesian foreign policy after the Reformasi (Reformation). In this context, as a person who comes from geography almost completely foreign to the region, I will try to convey to you the experiences I have lived for 2 years in Indonesia. Frankly, although I was worried that no scholarship student had come to Indonesia before me, I was also excited to be the first student to study the region. After I figured out that I was awarded the Indonesian scholarship program, the first thing I did was searching for doctoral programs here. In this con

  I am Yavuz Celik, a graduate student of Istanbul University, Department of History. In September of 2016, I moved to China, where my postgraduate studies started with the support of the Turkish Ministry of National Education's scholarship (YLSY). I hold a master’s degree from Nankai University’s International Affairs and Public Policy program. I then further pursued a doctoral project to specialize in the area. I have started my PhD at Shanghai University in August of 2018 under Professor Gaston Antonio Zapata Velasco's direction, in the field of Global Studies at the Shanghai University. My PhD thesis title is "China's Growing Economic Influence in Border Countries of Central Asia since 1991: The Case of Kazakhstan''.  In my studies, I focus on; Chinese Foreign Policy, the Sino-Central Asian relationship, Growing China's economic influence on the Central Asian states, China-Kazakhstan bilateral Relationship.   My PhD research is designed to provid

 Hello everyone from a country far away! I am Eren, a graduate of Political Science and Public Administration major from METU in 2016. In October 2018, I came to South Korea, where my grandfather set foot about 70 years ago by the help of the Ministry of Education's scholarship program, YLSY. After finishing Korean language program at Yonsei University, I decided to do my master's degree in Korean language, which I attended until the end of 2019. Never regretting the decision of taking courses in Korean, which was a very bold move for me, I have started my graduate education in Korean Studies at Seoul National University, Graduate School of International Studies in March 2020. I am currently in my third semester and doing the necessary literature research for my thesis. Although, the corona virus, one of the extraordinary pandemics in human history, has interrupted most of my plans in my graduate studies process. I can say that my most important achievement under the Covid-19 p