Hasan Aydin
Hasan Aydın has BA, MA and PhD degrees in International Relations. He graduated from Yalova University, Department of International Relations in 2016. During his undergraduate education, he was at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, within the scope of Erasmus mobility in 2015. In 2018, he completed his master's degree at Istanbul Medeniyet University, Department of International Relations with his thesis titled "The Main Approaches in U.S. Foreign Policy towards Africa (2001-2016)". Aydın, who started his first PhD education at the same university, also received a scholarship from the Ministry of National Education of the Republic of Turkey in 2018 for PhD education in abroad. As part of the scholarship, he studied Advanced Academic English at the University of Texas at Arlington in the USA in 2019.
Aydın defended his PhD thesis on "Alliance Quest in Third World Countries within the Framework of the Theory of Omnibalancing: The Case of Angola in the Civil War Era" at Istanbul Medeniyet University in 2022. He is now continuing his second PhD education in the Department of Global Studies at Shanghai University, begun in 2020 under the scholarship of the Ministry of National Education of the Republic of Turkey. Aydın also worked as "assistant coordinator" in academic institutions such as Association of Researchers on Africa (AFAM) and Africa Coordination and Training Center (AKEM).
Aydın’s main academic interests are great power politics on Africa and Turkish foreign policy. He has written a book in this field, published several academic articles in peer-reviewed journals and many academic analyzes (please see: https://shu-cn. academia.edu/HasanAYDIN).
Asia-Africa Development Cooperation: A Comparative Study of TICAD, FOCAC, and IAFS.
The main purpose of this research is to analyze the Africa+1 forums organized by Japan, China, and India in the past comparatively. In order to achieve this goal, Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) will be examined from two basic perspectives throughout the study, the development needs of African countries and the national interests of Asian countries. In this context, the project looks at, firstly, what Japan, China, and India did to contribute to the development efforts of African countries within the scope of the aforementioned forums. Secondly, it will evaluate how TICAD, FOCAC, and IAFS affected the influence of Japan, China, and India in Africa. Thus, based on the "Africa+1" forums, it will be argued that there was an interconnectedness between African countries' development quests and Asian countries' national interests. In this respect, it will be revealed that this interconnectedness provided mutual benefits (win-win situation) to both Asian and African countries through the "Africa+1 forums" in various fields, especially in the need for development. Overall, the context, effects, and results of the TICAD, FOCAC, and IAFS forums held until 2019 will be evaluated from the historical perspective comparatively and comprehensively.
Accordingly, the main research questions of this study are: 1) How did TICAD, FOCAC, and IAFS promote development cooperation between African countries and Japan, China, and India? In other words, what were these forums' main effects in terms of development cooperation? 2) How did TICAD, FOCAC, and IAFS affect the sphere of influences of Japan, China, and India in Africa?