Defne Arslan is the Senior Director and founder of Atlantic Council in Turkey, leading the Council’s global work and programming. Arslan joined the Council in 2015 as the Director of the Energy and Economic Summit before founding the Turkey program in 2018. She also served as the Council’s Regional Representative with a focus on Turkey. 

Before joining the Council, Arslan had a seventeen-year career with the US State Department, where she worked at the US embassy in Ankara as the Chief Turkey Economist responsible for monitoring the Turkish economy, as well as the IMF/World Bank programs being implemented in Turkey, and Senior Energy Advisor. Arslan is a former banker who started her career in Istanbul and then she expanded her experience also working as financial journalist and columnist for a financial/economic newspaper. Arslan worked at the Turkish International Cooperation Agency, where she was responsible for project financing in the Commonwealth of Independent States countries during her time in Turkey.