Dr. Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, where he won the Caplenor Faculty Research Award in 1995, the Outstanding Faculty Award in Teaching in 2000, the Faculty Research Award in 2023-2024, and the American Political Science Association award for Outstanding Teaching in Political Science in 2000, among others. He also is the Secretary-General of the EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) headquartered in Brussels. In the past he taught courses for many years during the summer at the International University in Vienna where he won the Distinguished Visiting Professor Award in 2003, as well as courses on Kurdish and Middle Eastern politics, among others, for the U.S. Government Areas Studies Program and U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. He has also taught at Kent State University and Fisk University. Dr. Gunter is the author or editor of 23 critically praised, peer-reviewed scholarly books on the Kurdish question and other subjects. He has also published more than 200 peer-reviewed scholarly book chapters and articles on the Kurds and many other issues in such leading scholarly periodicals as the Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, Middle East Quarterly, Middle East Critique, Orient, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Maghreb Review, Orbis, American Journal of International Law, International Organization, World Affairs, Journal of International Affairs (Columbia University), Brown Journal of World Affairs, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Current History, Third World Quarterly, International Journal of Turkish Studies, Insight Turkey, Turkish Studies, Terrorism: An International Journal, and Arms Control, among numerous others. His most recent books are Heydar Aliyev and the Foundations of Modern Azerbaijan (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024); Erdogan’s Path to Authoritarianism: The Continuing Journey (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2024); The Karabakh Conflict Between Armenia and Azerbaijan (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023); The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Historical and Political Perspectives (London and New York, 2023); The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2020); Kurdish Autonomy and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Peter Lang, 2020); The Kurds: A Divided Nation in Search of a State, 3rd ed., (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2019); Routledge Handbook on the Kurds, (London & New York: Routledge, 2019); Historical Dictionary of the Kurds, 3rd ed., (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); Kurdish Issues: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Olson (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2016); and Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (London: Hurst Publications, 2014).