04/02/2026
The “European Union’s Quest for a Relational Open Strategic Autonomy (QUEST)” project, co-authored by Senem Aydın Düzgit, Director of the Istanbul Policy Center (IPC), and Meltem Müftüler-Baç, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at Sabancı University, has achieved significant success under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Program.
The project was one of only two projects supported out of 18 applications submitted to the HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-04 call. Coordinated by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), the project will be implemented by an international consortium of partners from 10 different countries. With a total budget of €3.5 million, QUEST will be run by the Istanbul Policy Center with support from the FASS for four years.
Senem Aydın Düzgit, Meltem Müftüler-Baç, Alper Kaliber, and Nihat Muğurtay will conduct the project on behalf of Sabancı University.
The “Converging Views on Enlargement: Navigating Europe’s Next Evolution (CONVENE)” project, submitted to the HORIZON-CL2-2025-01-DEMOCRACY-03 call within the same program, was placed on the reserve list in the call where only three projects were funded out of 23 applications.
