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Dr. Zakir Gul


Associate Professor & Chair of Criminal Justice

Dr. Zakir Gul joined the criminal justice department as an associate professor. He is a police veteran. Dr. Gul began his career as a ranking police officer, working more than 16 years for the Turkish National Police. His policing career also includes being a police chief of two cities in a region where terrorism was an issue and the population was diverse.

Dr. Gul founded the International Security Graduate Program (in English) at the Security Sciences Institute in Turkey and served as founding director and professor. He worked in several research centers, such as the Intelligence Studies Research Center and the Center for International Terrorism and Transnational Crime. Dr. Gul was the graduate coordinator of the Erasmus Program and the deputy editor-in-chief of a peer-reviewed journal on policing. He also served on several selection and recruitment committees.

Dr. Gul has been teaching both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, such as terrorism/counterterrorism, security intelligence, strategic intelligence, intelligence-led policing, international security policy and strategic intelligence, introduction to policing, policing and society and white-collar crime since 2010. He also gave course workshops to several international police forces, including the Kosovo Police (strategic assessment), Afghani Police (problem solving and stress management) and the Sudanese Security Forces (leadership strategies in policing).

Dr. Gul considers himself as an optimist and believes that there is always a positive side to every situation, as long as one can see it. Further, his life dictionary does not (and will not) include the terms hate, discrimination, disrespect and intolerance, as he believes all humans have the same color of blood regardless of their own colorful attributes.

In his free time, Dr. Gul enjoys being together with his wife and four children and playing the Turkish guitar (Saz).

  • Education
    • Ph.D. in Political Science (Justice Policy & Politics), Kent State University, Ohio, 2009
    • M.A. in Criminal Justice, Kent State University, Ohio, 2003
    • B.A. in Security Sciences, Turkish National Police Academy (University), Turkey, 1996
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