News Release

Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award

June 20, 2005

The Brookings Institution and Sabancı University are delighted to announce the launch of the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award. This annual award is named in honor of the late Mr. Sakıp Sabancı, a prominent Turkish philanthropist and business leader. It is designed to promote fresh thinking, new ideas, and original research relevant to Turkish studies conducted in any field of the humanities and social sciences.

“The Brookings Institution’s association with the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award underscores our commitment to the increasingly important issue of Turkey’s role in the world,” said Philip Gordon, director of the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe, which houses the program on Turkey.

“This research prize will encourage more serious thinking about Turkey, which is hugely important not only for Turkey but for Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world.”

The topic for the 2006 Sakıp Sabancı Award is “Turkey’s New Geopolitical Environment: Policy Challenges and Opportunities for Engagement.” The competition calls for original, essay-length studies that address the key issues relating to the changes in Turkey’s neighborhood and how Turkey might respond to these changes. Studies focusing on any one or several of the following themes are welcome: Turkey’s relations with the European Union, Russia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Middle Eastern neighbors, and Central Asia, as well as Turkey’s potential role in transatlantic relations and democratization in the broader Middle East.

The Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award includes $20,000 for the first prize, $10,000 for the second, and $5,000 for the third. An independent, international jury, whose members will be announced in autumn 2005, will select the prize winners. The Award is jointly administered by the Brookings Institution and the Trustees of Sabancı University, Istanbul.

Conditions for the competition are:

  • All entries must be new and original works, not published previously in any form
  • Essays must be approximately 5000 to 6000 words
  • Essays must be submitted in English only by means of e-mail in the form of an attached Word document to the following two addresses simultaneously:

The deadline for submissions for the 2006 Award is January 31, 2006

“The Sabancı International Research Award is a testament to Mr. Sakıp Sabancı’s vision of a prosperous and democratic Turkey that plays a positive role in its region,” said Omer Taspinar, director of the Brookings Institution program on Turkey.

Mr. Sabancı, who passed away last year, was one of Turkey’s most prominent industrial leaders. The corporation that he headed, Sabancı Holding, is one of the world’s largest family owned businesses. Mr. Sabancı is also the founder of Istanbul’s Sabancı University, one of Turkey’s strongest academic institutions.

About Brookings

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. Our mission is to conduct in-depth, nonpartisan research to improve policy and governance at local, national, and global levels.