Henri J. Barkey is an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen chair in international relations at Lehigh University (Emeritus). Previously he was the director of the Middle East Center at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (2015-2017). Barkey served as chair of the Department of International Relations at Lehigh University for thirteen years. He served on the State Department Policy Planning Staff (1998-2000) working on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and intelligence-related issues. He was a non-resident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2008-2011). Currently, he also serves on the board of trustees of the American University in Iraq, Sulaimani.

He has written extensively on Turkey, the Kurds, and other Middle East issues. He is the author of “The End of Erdogan: How the Turkish Leader Has Engineered His Own Undoing,” Foreign Affairs, May 28, 2025, “Erdogan the Survivor: Washington Needs a New Approach to Turkey’s Improviser in Chief,” Foreign Affairs, September-October 2023, “The Kurdish Awakening: Unity, Betrayal, and the Future of the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs, March-April 2019, “Why Is Turkey Accusing Me of Plotting a Coup?” New York Times, September 1, 2016, among other publications.