Faruk Aksoy

Faruk Aksoy completed his PhD in Political Science at Sabancı University. His research and interests include political psychology, party politics, and political institutions. Aksoy’s work has been published in journals such as Party Politics, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, and Representation, as well as in edited volumes published by Routledge and ECPR Press.  

 Negotiating in Play: A Game-Based Exploration of Turkish-German Relations 

This project develops a browser-based negotiation game that simulates Turkey–Germany relations across key contemporary issues, including energy cooperation, NATO commitments, EU-Turkey relations, migration policy, and regional conflicts such as the Russia-Ukraine war. Players assume the role of one country and negotiate with a computer-controlled counterpart whose responses are governed by a utility-based decision model reflecting political positions, public opinion, issue salience, and government approval ratings. 

In addition to its public-facing design, the game also functions as a controlled experiment. By manipulating variables such as the country's identity and the ideological orientation of its hypothetical government, the study examines how political orientation, institutional context, and national framing shape negotiation behavior and attitudes toward that country. Data will be collected from these large-scale online experiments as well as from in-person interviews conducted with student participants in Turkey. 

Motivated by the gap between the strategic importance of Turkey–Germany relations and the public’s limited understanding of their complexity, the project translates this bilateral relationship into an interactive, accessible, and analytically grounded experience.