Aytug Sasmaz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He studies politics of development and party politics in the Middle East and North Africa. His dissertation research focuses on the secular modernist parties in the region and the determinants of their electoral strength in the post-uprisings period. This project was supported by Democracy International, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Institute for Quantitative Social Science and Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Other research projects explore political determinants of health care quality in Lebanon, democratic decline and changes in institutional preferences in Turkey and politics of social policy delivery for refugees. He holds a BA degree from Bogazici University (Istanbul) and an MSc degree from the London School of Economics. Prior to PhD training, he worked as an education policy analyst, designing and executing several policy research projects with the UNICEF, World Bank, and Ministry of Education in Turkey. Mr. Sasmaz is a pre-doctoral research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs for the 2020-2021 academic year. Website: www.aytugsasmaz.com