Istanbul Policy Center at Sabancı University is an independent policy research institute with global outreach.  Our mission is to foster academic research in social sciences and its application to policy making.  We are firmly committed to providing decision-makers, opinion leaders, academics, and general public with innovative and objective analyses in key domestic and foreign policy issues.  IPC has expertise in a wide range of areas, including—but not exhaustive to—Turkey-EU-U.S. relations, current trends of political and social transformation in Turkey, as well as the impact of civil society and local governance on this metamorphosis. 
   
The Center’s value-added contribution to academia and public policy sector stems from its ability to track these developments closely and offer insightful evaluations on their meaning for Turkey’s global aspirations in a rapidly-integrating world.  Furthermore, IPC stands out from many of its peers with its exceptional access to intellectual capital and vast reserves of scientific knowledge at Sabancı University.  IPC thus offers policy makers, academics and young researchers a unique platform where sound academic research in social sciences shapes hands-on policy work.

Apart from bringing in consideration and efficiency in creating public policies and policy options in Turkey, the main objectives of IPC can be listed as follows:

• Acting as a bridge between social science knowledge and policy research
• Increasing the contribution of social sciences in public policy-making.
• Educating researchers on applied social sciences and applied policy-making by improving interdisciplinary approaches
• Making collaborations with universities, institutions and other policy research and applications related corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in order to direct the social science potential to policy research
• Making collaborations with the universities and research institutes alike on the basis of project making and training.

In the short period of time since its foundation, IPC has formed  solid partnerships with prestigious  think tanks from around  the world.  The wide range of institutions that have collaborated with IPC includes: The German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Transatlantic Academy, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, the Center for European Enlargement Studies at Central European University, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Europaische Akademie Berlin, IEMed (European Institue of the Mediterranean), ELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy), The Atlantic Council of the United States, and the Hollings Center.

IPC represents Turkey as a member of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). ISSP is a comparative data collection program, which aims to answer scientific questions on social phenomena in 43 countries.

Istanbul Policy Center has state-of-art research facilities and conference venues.  IPC headquarters is located in Karaköy, a historic and busy commercial district at the heart of Istanbul.  IPC also maintains offices and has access to modern conference and research facilities on the Sabancı University campus to accommodate our international guests.  In addition, much celebrated meeting halls and conference rooms at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum are available for high-profile IPC events.