FOUR NEW ADJUNCT FELLOWS
JOIN
WESTERN POLICY CENTER
ANALYSIS TEAM
(October 25, 2004, Washington, D.C.) The Western Policy Center today announced that Marika Karayianni, an advisor on Black Sea energy issues to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Dr. Ognyan Minchev, a professor and advisor on regional security matters to the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Soli Ozel, a professor and international affairs advisor to Turkey’s leading business organization; and Dr. Achilles Skordas, an international law professor and defense policy advisor to the Greek Parliament, have been named Adjunct Fellows at the Center.
“We are pleased to embark on this collaborative effort with such accomplished foreign and security policy specialists,” said John Sitilides, Executive Director at the Western Policy Center. “Individually and collectively, Ms. Karayianni, Dr. Minchev, Prof. Ozel, and Dr. Skordas provide this Center with vast informational resources, extensive regional experience, and a commitment to informed, insightful commentary that will broaden and elevate the public debate on American and European policies in the eastern Mediterranean, southern Balkan, and surrounding regions.”
Marika S. Karayianni, advisor to the Greek Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs since September 2004, holds a Law Degree from the University of Athens and a Master’s Degree (DEA) in European Political and Administrative Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the field of “Institutional Aspects of Oil and Gas Exploitation in the Caspian Sea” at Panteion University in Athens. Ms. Karayianni was trained at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow and was a Research Assistant in the Diplomatic Office of former Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou. In 2000, she joined the Organization for Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) as an expert on European affairs and energy issues in Russia and the former Soviet Union, with a particular interest in the Caspian and Central Asia regions. Her latest publications include an occasional paper on the legal status of the Caspian Sea basin, a case study on the energy potential of Kazakhstan, and a chapter in the 2004 book “The Caspian. Politics, Energy, Security.” Ms. Karayianni speaks and writes Greek, English, French, and Russian, and has a working knowledge of Ukrainian.
Ognyan Minchev is Director of the Sofia-based Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS), an independent public policy and research institution associated with the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. Since April 1998, Dr. Minchev has also been the Chairman of the Department of Political Science of the University of Sofia. He received fellowships to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Lomonossov State University of Moscow. Dr. Minchev holds a Ph.D. in Sociological Science and a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Sofia. His publications include “Bulgaria for NATO,” “The Balkans After Milosevic: Happy End Postponed,” “Macedonia: Milosevic’s Last Trump Card,” and “The Extension of NATO, Russia and the Balkans.”
Soli Ozel is a Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Istanbul Bilgi University and is currently a columnist for Sabah newspaper. He received his B.A. from Bennington College and his M.A. from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He then attended the University of California, Berkeley, for doctoral studies in Political Science. Prof. Ozel has taught at SAIS; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the University of Washington; Hebrew University; and Bogazici University in Istanbul. He was a Fellow at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University in the spring of 2002 and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in the fall of that year. Prof. Ozel is an advisor to the chairman of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) on foreign policy issues, and editor of Private View, the journal of TUSIAD. He is also the editor of the Turkish edition of Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endowment, and has been writing the annual review of Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy events for Intermedia’s Almanac.
Achilles Skordas has been an Assistant Professor of International Studies at the Athens University School of Law since 1997, teaching public international law, international organizations, international economic law, and human rights law on immigration and refugees. He is Director of the Department of International and Defense Studies of the Greek Parliament, serving since 2003 as an advisor on international legal issues to the parliament and the speaker. Dr. Skordas was previously a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for International Law and Public Policy at Temple University in Philadelphia; a Visiting Professor at the School of Law, University Paris XII; a Visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany; and a Fulbright Scholar on the U.S. political system at the University of Southern Illinois, upon the invitation of the U.S. State Department. Dr. Skordas’s books include “The Advisory Opinions on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons” (in Greek) and “Protection of Vulnerable Aliens in International Law and Greek Domestic Law.” He received a Ph.D. in Law from Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and a J.D. (Doctor of Law) from the University of Athens in Greece.
