NewslettersBorderless Report July 2011Crescent in the ascent: Turkish universities abroad Crescent in the ascent: Turkish universities abroad
‘Teachers are the one and only people who save nations’, according to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Republic of Turkey. Economists and university professors, of course, also have their uses. Turkey is one of the biggest success stories of the last decade, and even international organisations such as the World Bank recognise that it will emerge as a ‘global pole’ over the next 25 years. Turkish universities have played a significant role in this process and are expected to fare even better in the future.
Turkey has dodged the financial and economic crisis with only the slightest damage incurred and is confident enough to announce projects on a massive scale. A recent example is PM Tayyip Erdogan’s ‘crazy and magnificent’ plan to construct a canal by the Bosphorus between the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara. On top of that, Turkish foreign policy seems to diversify in scope, goals and tools. As it happens, higher education has a significant role to play in such an opening.
Spearheaded by Ahmet Davutoglu, a professor of international relations and Turkey’s foreign minister, Turkish diplomacy envisages a new role for the country in world affairs. Davutoglu is a proponent of the soft power theory of international relations and aims to make Turkey a country with zero enemies and maximum leverage in the region. Consequently, Turkey’s longstanding goal of EU membership is no longer perceived by the ruling elite as the sacred cow of the Kemalist tradition – although it is not yet contested in public. On the contrary, and without completely scrapping its European ambitions, Turkey is reaching out for the surrounding Arab world and even promotes its ‘democracy a la turca‘ as a model for nascent democracies in the Middle East.
Turkey and the Middle East
Winning hearts and minds in the old Ottoman Empire is an ambitious plan and cannot be carried out solely through military or diplomatic means. Culture and religion are obviously on the table. The popularity of Turkish TV in the Arab world, for example, is not a new phenomenon, but in a time of soul-searching in the Middle East it receives more attention.
Turkish universities now seem willing and able to take advantage of this cultural advantage. Until recently they looked to the West in emulating and, if possible, partnering with French, British and American universities. Some, such as İstanbul Bilgi University, were modelled on Western universities. It was founded in 1996 and is today one of the most successful Turkish higher education institutions.
But the Middle East is a new frontier. In a recent interview with the Istanbul daily Today’s Zaman, the president of the Turkish Board of Higher Education, Yusuf Ziya Özcan, revealed that they aim to double the number of international students at Turkish universities. Turkish universities have started holding open days and events in the Middle East. In April, for example, 13 Turkish universities held the ‘First Turkish Universities Fair’ in Lebanon.
Some prestigious Turkish universities are private and expansion is therefore not as hard as for state universities. A main target market is of course the domestic one because the rising Anatolian elite, much favoured by PM Erdoğan’s economic policies, are on the lookout for status symbols, and a university degree is a good one.
Private universities are also active in politics, which state universities prefer to avoid. The Fethullah Gülen movement, founded by a Sufi scholar based in the US, has a following among the educated middle classes and impacts on all sectors of the Turkish establishment, including the ruling AK party. Its branch in the education sector is the Fezalar Educational Institutions, a network of thousands of institutions in Turkey and abroad.
The Istanbul-based Işık University, which is affiliated with the Institute, recently opened a campus in Arbil in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The Turkish Consul General Aydin Selcen attended the inauguration ceremony and Ali Babacan, Turkey’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs, hailed its opening as a major contribution to the improvement of relations between Turkey and the region. A makeshift university campus built in Kashmir by Turkey after an earthquake in 2005 was opened by PM Erdogan.
Perhaps that is a harbinger of the future of higher education in the region. As the Observatory’s 2009 International Branch Campuses: Markets and Strategies report demonstrated, the opening of ‘south-to-south’ branch campuses is a new trend in global higher education. Turkey, along with India, Malaysia and China, could be a major player in this market in the future. Turkish universities have earned a good reputation over the last two decades and this is reflected in recent world rankings. Bilkent University and Middle East Technical University, for example, have been placed 15th and 25th, respectively, in the 2010-2011 Top Asian Universities Ranking by Times Higher Education.
Higher Education, a Powerful Tool of Influence
Erdogan’s government is also forging ties with African countries. It recently opened 15 embassies in that continent and the Turkish Ministry of Education has launched a scholarship programme for Ugandan students. Turkey’s rapprochement with this part of the world was highlighted by the first Turkey-Africa summit in 2008 in Istanbul. Another is expected to take place in 2013 in an African country.
Religion is also an asset for Turkey in Africa. In 2009 the government-led Directorate for Religious Affairs invited some 300 Muslim students from Africa to study theology in Turkey. As academics Mehmet Ozkan and Birol Akgun point out in a recent interview on the American-run website Balkanalysis.com, ‘inviting African students to study in Turkey, in theology and other fields, is part of Turkey’s soft power effort in Africa’. That seems to be a major argument in the hands of Turkish diplomacy when dealing with its western allies, as Turkish Islamism promotes itself as a moderate alternative to the arrival of radical Islam in northern Africa. (See Nigeria story in the News section of this newsletter.)
Ottoman Past, Global Future The government seems to have a long-term plan for all levels of the education sector. Aiming to internationalise the country’s resources, the Ministry of Education announced in March its plan to hire 40,000 native English speakers to teach English at Turkish schools. Europe is not ignored by the Turkish authorities: in June Turkey and Poland signed a science and technology agreement to facilitate joint scientific projects and exchanges. In 2011 the German-Turkish University in Istanbul opened its doors to Turkish and international students. This new institution, funded by both governments, aims at an ambitious 5,000 students for the next academic year. DAAD coordinated the launch. (See interview with the Rector of the German-Turkish University in this issue.) Turkish universities have also been favoured by a side effect of economic success: the reversal of out-migration. As with other countries racing to catch up, Turkey imports academic staff. Some are themselves Turks, many raised and educated in Germany and the Netherlands. They bring new ideas and an open-minded, multicultural mentality, not to mention advanced degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Freie Universität Berlin. Investment in research and innovation is part of the mix. According to the Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century report published by The Royal Society in March, Turkey is an emerging power in science publications. It increased its R&D spend nearly six-fold, the number of researchers by 43%, and the number of Turkish-authored papers four-fold between 1995 and 2008. This rate of growth almost rivals China’s. Not that the past is another country for Turkish universities. Rows over academic freedom and the right of female students to wear headscarves on campus show that there is still a way to go. Worryingly, Turkey is one of the few countries apart from China where searches of certain keywords on Google is not possible, and YouTube appears currently to be banned. What’s Next Turkish higher education is at the crossroads between a complicated past and an ambitious future. And it is situated in a troubled neighbourhood where nothing is too certain. So what’s next? Higher education policy tends to follow a country’s economic and foreign policies, even when these are hazy and evolving. Chinese universities received no attention in the 1960s, when China was politically isolated. Turkey is moving quickly, its HE sector is integral to its national goals, and we are set to hear more about both. AK