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).
Why Do People Join a Terrorist Organization? The PKK Case. State University of New York at Plattsburgh (November 19, 2019, Cardinal Lounge,
Angell Center)
Panel Chair: Political Violence, Discrimination, and Risk. American Society of Criminology (ASC) 75th Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA (November
13–17, 2019)
Perception of Terrorism Risk in New York. American Society of Criminology (ASC) 75th Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA (November
13–17, 2019)
The Use of Excessive Force against Minorities. Conference of the Many Faces of Social Justice, organized by the State University
of New York at Plattsburgh (February 27, 2019, Yokum 202)
Kule, Ahmet and Gul, Zakir. (2015). How individuals join terrorist organizations in Turkey: an empirical study
of the DHKP-C, PKK and Turkish Hezbollah. The Global: A Journal of Policy & Security. 1(1): 15-47
Gul, Zakir and Kule, Ahmet. (2013). Intelligence-led policing: how the use of crime intelligence
analysis translates into the decision-making. Journal of International Security and Terrorism. 4(1): 21-40
Gul, Zakir, Hekim, Hakan, and Terkesli, Ramazan. (2013). Controlling police use of (excessive)
force: the American case. International Journal of Human Sciences. 10(2): 285-303.
Gul, Zakir and Delice, Murat. (2011). Police job stress and stress reduction/coping programs:
The effects on the relationship with spouses. Turkish Journal of Police Studies. 13(3):19-38.