Dr. Cüneyt Gürer is Professor of Transnational Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. His research interests and areas of expertise comprise transnational security issues, regional security dynamics, democratic backsliding and security governance, and nonstate actors in contemporary conflicts. He is the author and co-editor of a recent book titled “Proxy Wars from a Global Perspective: Non-State Actors and Armed Conflicts.” He lectures on the interaction of Turkey’s domestic politics with its regional security policy process and from a scholarly perspective he focuses on the regime change structures and State and non-State interaction in this process putting security at the center of the analysis. He has obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science, Kent State University.