Dr Digdem Soyaltin Colella

Biography

Digdem Soyaltin Colella is a lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen, UK. She is also a member of the global strategy reference group of Transparency International Berlin. Her research concentrates on the politics of corruption, mechanisms of state capture and regime survival, autocratic bureaucracies & illiberal governance, and Southeast European and Turkish politics. Her publications appeared in Third World Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, South European and Black Sea Studies, International Political Science Review, European Politics and Society, Turkish Studies, International Spectator, Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science, and Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. She is the author of EU Good Governance Promotion in the Age of Democratic Decline (ed, Palgrave, 2022) and Europeanisation, Corruption and Good Governance in the Public Sector: The Case of Turkey (Routledge, 2017).

Before joining the University of Aberdeen, she worked as an associate professor in Political Science at Altınbaş University in Istanbul. She was also the academic director of the Jean Monnet Module “EU Good Governance Promotion Inside and Beyond Its Borders" (EUGOGOV) funded by the European Commission (2018-2021) and acted as a board member at Transparency International (TI) Turkey between 2018 and 2022. 

She received her Ph.D. degree in Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Stockholm University. She holds MSc. in European Affairs from Lund University and M.Phil in Political Science from Central European University. She contributed to the ANTICORRP (Anticorruption Policies Revisited) project, the Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index of Transparency International UK, and the ICF Brussels Project on Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Council of Europe support to the implementation of the European Convention of Human Rights in Turkey

Research Overview

Good governance and anti-corruption policy, global governance of corruption, EU and fight against corruption, politics of corruption, mechanisms of state capture, autocratic bureaucracies, illiberal governance, authoritarian regime survival, Turkish politics,  Southeast European politics.

Current Research

My current research: 

• Eating Away at the Fabric of Society: How Disinformation Undermines Democracy by Burdening Civil Society Organisations (together with PIR team, to be presented in a PIR seminar next semester)
• When Experts Lose Credibility: Populism and the Contestation of Corruption Indices in the Global South (GIGA, University of Hamburg, September 2026)
• Framing the scandal: competing universalisms in the European Parliament's response to Qatargate (I work together with my PhD student in Italy; the paper will be presented at the UACES conference June 2026)

Under review

• Youth Movements and Opposition Parties in Times of Autocratization: Turkey and Serbia, PSA Conference, University of Oxford, March 2026
• Enemies Abroad, Support at Home? The Impact of Anti-Western Propaganda in Turkey, APSG Conference, King's College London, June 2025
• Faith No More: Does perceived corruption erode public trust and confidence in democracy in the UK? PIR Semınar October 2025

Past Research

 Populist Resilience to Corruption: Institutional, Discursive, and Partisan Strategies in Hungary and Turkey, Politics, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02633957261416106 

Ecofeminist struggle for epistemic recognition beyond the EU? The case of Akbelen Forest in Turkey. Journal of Gender Studies, 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2024.2431571

The Geopolitics of Turkey’s Rise as a Drone Power, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Summer 2024 Print Edition, "Limits Reimagined: Navigating a Turbulent World" 25 (1):12-20  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/934880

The Strategic Use of Narratives and Governance of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Major Autocratisers in Europe, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19448953.2024.2307820

Unusual middle power activism and regime survival: Turkey’s drone warfare and its regime boosting effects, Third World Quarterly https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2022.2158080

The EU Accession Process, Chinese Finance and Rising Corruption in Western Balkan Stabilitocracies: Serbia and Montenegro, Europe-Asia Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2022.2115013

When does bureaucracy function in autocratizing regimes? The Court of Auditors in Turkey, Turkish Studies,  https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2022.2126767

 How to capture the judiciary under the guise of EU-led reforms: domestic strategies of resistance and erosion of rule of law in Turkey, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 22:3, 441-462, https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2022.2044577

Illiberal challenges to the European Union’s legitimacy from within and without: the rule of law and refugee crises, Journal of Contemporary European Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2022.2112158 

Soyaltin-Colella, D. (2022). The EU’s ‘actions-without-sanctions’? The politics of the rule of law crisis in many Europes. European Politics and Society, 23(1), 25–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2020.1842698

Collaborations

The State of the World:  Mis/disinformation in Scotland in collaboration with the PIR colleagues, funded by Scottish Council on Global Affairs (SCGA)

Populist Resilience to Corruption: Institutional, Discursive, and Partisan Strategies in Hungary and Turkey, in collaboration with Dr. Robert Csehi, Corvinus University, Budapest 

Anti-West Propaganda in Authoritarian Regimes: The case of Turkey (funded by the School of Social Sciences -University of Aberdeen) in collaboration with Dr. Aykut Ozturk, University of Glasgow

Corruption and anti-corruption in the age of democracy crisis: What can we learn for Scotland? (IEAF Impact grant, in collaboration with Transparency International UK, Open Government Partnership Scotland)

Funding and Grants

Recent projects/grants

2026, Principal Investigator(PI), Perception of corruption and epistemic populism in Turkey, survey experiment, funded by the School of Social Sciences (£3000), University of Aberdeen

2026: Co-PI, Mis/disinformation and the role of CSOs for deliberative democracy, Interviews, funded by the School of Social Sciences (£700), University of Aberdeen

2025-2026, Co-facilitator,  Scottish Council on Global Affairs (SCGA funding, State of the World project, Misinformation in Scotland (£3000)

2024-2025: Co-PI, Internal seed funding, School of Social Sciences (£5000), University of Aberdeen, project on Anti-West Propaganda in Turkey 

2025, Facilitator, Corruption and Anti-corruption in the Age of Populism: What can we learn for Scotland? Royal Society of Edinburgh, 4 June (in collaboration with Transparency International UK and Open Society Scotland) (funded by Impact & Engagement Accelerator Fund, University of Aberdeen)

Previous projects/grants

Jean Monnet Module EU Good Governance Promotion Inside and Beyond Its Borders (EUGOGOV) (2018-2021) European Commission,  Project number 599443-EPP-1-2018-1-TREPPJMO-MODULE (23.200EUR)

Swedish Institute Post-doc Scholarship (6 months- 108.000 SEK)

Swedish Institute Ph.D. write-up grant (6 months- 90.000 SEK)

Kolleg Forsger Gruppe-College on Transformative Power of Europe, Ph.D. scholarships (3 years) (45.000 EUR)

Central European University, Budapest MpHil Scholarships (1 year) (10.200 EUR)

Swedish Institute Master Scholarships (2 years) (22.000 EUR)