Mehmet Onur Şahin

Mehmet is a PhD student in the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. Before starting his PhD, he completed his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts at the Political Science and International Relations Department of Boğaziçi University. His research is on the defence offset regulations and its contributions to defence industrialisation in Turkey.

Mehmet also leads School of Security Studies Postgraduate Peer Support Network, which aims to connect PGRs with each other. 

Doctoral research

Thesis title: The contribution of defence offset in promoting the indigenisation of Turkey’s defence industrial base

The contribution of the defence offsets to defence industrialisation is widely contested. While some of the scholars of defence procurement argue that defence offsets complicate the transaction and increase the time and the energy spent on every project and thus lead to a lose-lose situation both for the buyer and the seller; other scholars, especially from the developing world, provide us with certain cases that show defence offsets can actually contribute to the defence industrialisation. The project to be presented aims to evaluate Turkey's defence offset regulations to contribute to the debate on the role of defence offsets and their effects on defence industrialisation. The sources of information for this project are the literature on defence procurement and offsets, publicly available reports regarding the defence industry of Turkey, and elite interviews.

Research interests

• Defence procurement in developing nations
• Defence industrial base
• Technology transfer and research & development through defence trade
• Turkish defence industrial base 

PhD supervision

Principal supervisor: Professor Andrew Dorman 

Secondary supervisor: Dr Warren Chin

Further information

See Mehmet's research profile