She graduated from Istanbul High School in 1996 and earned her degree in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University in 2001. In 2008, she completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Politics at American University in Washington, DC. Since 2009, she has been serving as a faculty member in Political Science at Işık University. Her research focuses on democratization, state-business relations, and gender issues. Her work has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including Comparative Politics, Third World Quarterly, Middle East Journal, Middle Eastern Studies, South European Politics and Society, New Perspectives on Turkey, Turkish Studies, and Arab Studies Quarterly.