Dimitar Bechev

Dr. Dimitar Bechev is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, where he focuses on EU enlargement, the Western Balkans, Russia, and the Black Sea. He is also the director of the Dahrendorf Programme on Europe in a Changing World at the European Studies Centre of the University of Oxford's St Antony's College.

Bechev is the author of Turkey under Erdogan (Yale University Press, 2022), Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (Rowman, 2019), and Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe (Yale UP, 2017) as well as co-editor of Russia Rising: Putin’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomsbury, 2021). He has also published numerous academic articles and policy reports. 

His past positions include lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and senior policy fellow, head of the Sofia office at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

Bechev has held fellowships at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna; Harvard’s Center for European Studies; and the European Institute, London School of Economics. He contributes frequently to Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, Politico Europe, and RFE/RL and his quotes have appeared in the FT, the Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other major news outlets.