Alper Coşkun

Alper Coşkun is a senior fellow within the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. His research focuses on Turkish foreign policy, especially in relation to the United States and Europe. 

He is a retired career diplomat of thirty-two years with extensive experience in both bilateral and multilateral settings. He was the director general for international security affairs at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2016-2019), covering NATO, transatlantic relations, as well as Euro-Atlantic security/defense and arms control/disarmament matters. Before that, he was ambassador to Baku, Azerbaijan (2012-2016), where he oversaw one of Türkiye’s most active and largest diplomatic missions with a wide multiagency composition. 

He has held positions within the Turkish Foreign Ministry at various levels on issues related to maritime jurisdiction affairs, counter terrorism/intelligence, and NATO/Euro-Atlantic security matters. He has served in the cabinets of both the minister of foreign affairs and the undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His foreign assignments include Turkish missions in Moscow, Athens, and the United Nations, as well as NATO, where he was the deputy permanent representative. Previously, he was a faculty member of the NATO Defense College in Rome. He is married and has two daughters.