Gerald Knaus: "Do outsiders get the Balkans and Turkey?"

How can a think tank write reports that have impact? Can headlines be planned? Is impact on the public debate and impact on policy makers the same?

Starting with ESI publications on Bosnia – the European Raj (2003); Lost in the Bosnian labyrinth (2013); Protest and Illusions (2004-2014) – this presentation examines the strategy of a European think tank: from research strategies to writing style to dissemination efforts.

The presentation also looks at the background story to a widely read report on Turkey – Islamic Calvinists (2005) – and the challenge of tackling another burning political issue in Turkey today: political justice.

Gerald Knaus is ESI's founding chairman. He studied in Oxford, Brussels and Bologna, taught economics at the State University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine and spent five years working for NGOs and international organisations in Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 2001 to 2004, he was the director of the Lessons Learned Unit of the EU Pillar of the UN Mission in Kosovo. In 2011, he co-authored, alongside Rory Stewart, the book “Can Intervention Work?” He co-authored more than 60 ESI reports, including "Caviar Diplomacy – How Azerbaijan Silenced the Council of Europe" (2012), "Disgraced – Azerbaijan and the end of election monitoring as we know it" (2013), "Islamic Calvinists" (2005, on Turkey) and "The European Raj" (2003, on Bosnia). He also wrote scripts for 12 award-winning TV documentaries on South East Europe (www.returntoeurope.eu, 2008-2012). He is a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and was Associate Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, where he was lecturing on state building and intervention 2009/2010. He is based in Istanbul and Paris and writes the Rumeli Observer blog www.rumeliobserver.eu.