Erdem Denk

Erdem Denk is a professor of international law and international relations at Ankara University and the founder of the transdisciplinary research initiative Arkeopolitics, which integrates archaeology, history, political theory, and legal history to reinterpret the long-term dynamics of human societies. His research focuses on the evolution of law and social order since the Paleolithic. He is the author of The 50,000-Year World Order: Societies and Their Laws (2021, in Turkish) and is currently working on three books, in Turkish and English, titled When There Was No State, The Invention of the State, and The Story of the State.

September 29, 2026

Sri Lanka

What Sri Lanka’s Easter Judgment Finally Reveals

Sri Lanka’s September 22, 2026 Easter Sunday judgment marks a decisive legal reckoning with one of the country’s deadliest terrorist attacks, convicting 15 of 24 defendants after an extensive examination of thousands

Geopolitics/Human Rights/Judiciary

Exclusive: Inside Sri Lanka’s Easter Plot — Read the Full TAB Judgment

The 22 September 2026 Trial-at-Bar judgment provides a detailed account of the alleged network behind Sri Lanka’s 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, tracing the prosecution’s case from ideological indoctrination and recruitment to weapons, explosives, logistical support and the coordinated suicide bombings

September 29, 2026

Bluffing Is Not Diplomacy

Editor's Choice/Geopolitics

Sri Lanka has every right to speak forcefully on Palestine and international justice. But moral authority abroad cannot substitute for diplomatic precision at home.

Sri Lanka and China Deepen Indian Ocean Policy Dialogue

Events/Sri Lanka

The Pathfinder Foundation and the China Center for South Asian Studies (CCSAS) at Sichuan University launched the Colombo Maritime Dialogue 2026 Report at a

Is Türkiye’s Megalithic Archaeological Site Göbeklitepe a Temple?

August 15, 2026

Sri Lanka Guardian Essays

While shooting a documentary at Göbeklitepe, I encountered strikingly different historical interpretations of the site. An international group of New Age seekers seemed to be searching for extraterrestrial connections there, but when I pointed

The Mirror of Neolithic Art

June 10, 2026

Diplomacy/Education

The theme for an exhibition that opened on June 4, 2026, at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye), World’s First City Plan/Map, as part of my Arkeopolitics initiative, was met with reservations by a

Arkeopolitics: Reframing Human History from Scratch

April 4, 2026

World

In the heart of Ankara, less than a kilometer apart, stand two pillars of Turkish academia: the Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye) and the Faculty of Language and History-Geography (DTCF). Mülkiye was

Surviving a Pan-Crisis

March 11, 2026

Defence/Diplomacy

We are not facing separate crises, but the simultaneous collapse of multiple historical orders unfolding in the present. Not only international relations and political science scholars but also the broader communities of