[4] Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).

[5] He has also served on contract as chair of the Turkey Advanced Area Studies Program at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute.

Cagaptay has written extensively on Turkey–United States relations; Turkish domestic politics; Turkish nationalism; Turkey's rise as an economic power and Ankara's Middle East policy, publishing in scholarly journals and international print media including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Times, International Herald Tribune, Jane's Defence Weekly, and Habertürk.

He is a regular columnist for Hürriyet Daily News, Turkey's oldest English-language paper, and a contributor to CNN's Global Public Square blog.

He appears regularly in interviews and documentaries speaking with Voice of America, CNN, NPR, BBC, al-Jazeera, CNBC, PBS, and Fox News.