Patricia Carley
Patricia Carley is a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a U.S. government agency established by Congress to conduct an independent, ongoing review of the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom abroad. She works primarily on Central, South, and East Asia for the Commission and contributes to the Commission's annual Report on International Religious Freedom.

Until 1998 she was program officer for the former Soviet Union and Turkey at the United States Institute of Peace, where she also worked on broader issues such as self-determination, state sovereignty, international conflict resolution, and Western relations with the Islamic world. In addition to specific chapters in the Commission's reports, Carley is the author of several Peace Institute publications, including Self-Determination: Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Right to Secession; U.S. Responses to Self-Determination Movements; Nagorno-Karabakh: Searching for a Solution; Turkey's Role in the Middle East; and The Future of the CSCE. Before working at the Peace Institute, Carley was a staff advisor for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission), where, among other publications, she authored the Central Asia section of the Helsinki Commission's Human Rights and Democratization in the Newly Independent States (1993). Other of Carley's publications include "Turkey and Central Asia: Reality Comes Calling" in Regional Power Rivalries in the New Eurasia: Russia, Turkey, and Iran (M. E. Sharpe, 1995) and "The Legacy of the Soviet Political System and the Prospects for Developing Civil Society in Central Asia" in Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (M. E. Sharpe, 1995).

Carley received a B.A. in Soviet studies from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in international affairs from the George Washington University, and did dissertation work on Turkey and Central Asia at the London School of Economics. She also has an M.A. in theology from the Washington Theological Union.