Gökhan Yücel
Head of the Communications Department at the Investment Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye
Born in 1977 in Karagümrük, Istanbul, he graduated from Pertevniyal High School and later obtained his degree from the Faculty of Communication at Marmara University. He completed his master’s degree in Political Science at the University of Essex and studied Comparative Politics and Public Policy at the University of Oxford. In 2012, he participated in the Public Leadership Program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on a full scholarship and successfully completed it. Between 2003 and 2007, he taught courses on Middle Eastern politics, strategy, and security at the University of Oxford. He has worked as an analyst at Oxford Analytica and Global Water Intelligence.
Currently, he is responsible for communications at the Investment Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye. Previously, he served as the head of the strategic communication and crisis management department at the Directorate of Communications, Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye. His research areas include strategic communication, event and campaign management, brand design, nation branding, intelligence, hybrid threats, digital diplomacy, AI and the military, the impact of technology trends, 21st-century skills, algorithms, and the effects of the digital revolution on human life and society. He speaks, teaches, and writes about strategic communication, media, information warfare, behavioral science, intelligence (OSINT, GEOINT), data-driven policy, and political campaigns. He served as a senior advisor to Ziya Selçuk, the Turkish Minister of Education, from 2018 to 2020. He has taught “Communication Skills for Engineers” at Yıldız Technical University and “Digital Diplomacy” and “AI and the Military” courses at the National Defense University in Istanbul. He is a member of the Teacher Prize Academy and has recently contributed to OECD’s Education 2030 project. Additionally, he has served on the AI Committee at the Turkish National Commission for UNESCO and the Digital Diplomacy Working Group at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He led two recent projects of Diplomacy Live: The State of Digital Diplomacy and The Digital Diplomacy Review 2017, which are featured in the U.S. Department of State’s publication titled “Optimizing Engagement: Research, Evaluation, and Learning in Public Diplomacy.”
