Ertuğ is a Turkish political scientist and Senior Research Associate at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Institut für Sozialwissenschaften). He serves as the Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Research on Democracy (CCRD), specializing in democratic theory, constitutionalism, comparative populism, and the sociology of law. He holds two Ph.D. degrees, in Political Science and Sociology, and has completed visiting fellowships at both Northwestern University and Yale University. Prior to his appointment in Berlin, he instructed courses at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research.
His academic research focuses heavily on democratic backsliding and the lifecycle of populist politics, exploring the precise institutional shifts that transform fragile democracies into authoritarian regimes. Using contemporary Turkey as a primary case study, his scholarship maps how ruling parties weaponize legal instruments to bypass constitutional constraints and construct monolithic control over religious pluralism and civil society. Alongside Gülçin Balamir Coşkun, his recent publications critically track the criminalization of the legal profession, analyzing how autocratic regimes systematically target independent bar associations to subvert the rule of law. Since 2009, he has also served as the Managing Editor of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory.