Graduated from Adapazarı Imam Hatip High School and Marmara Faculty of Theology (1991), Atilla Arkan received her PhD in Islamic Philosophy from Marmara University Institute of Social Sciences in 1999. He also worked at the Institute of Islamic Civilization and Thought at the Islamic University of Malaysia between 1996-1999 for his second doctorate study.

He started working as an academic at Sakarya University in 1994. He became a professor at the same university in 2013. Between 2012-2014, he was a visiting research lecturer at the Canadian McGill University, Institute of Islamic Studies.

Prof. Arkan, who has served as the Director of Education and Social Policy Studies at SETA since 2017, in addition to being a lecturer at Sakarya University Faculty of Theology and Head of the Department of Islamic Philosophy, is fluent in English and Arabic.