Forum focuses on Turkey-UK higher education partnership

Academics from Turkish and British universities and government agencies held a one-day event Tuesday in London to find avenues for collaboration and develop news connections Tuesday.

Deputy President of Higher Education Board Professor Rahmi Er, told Anadolu Agency the council attaches “a great importance to internationalization of Turkish higher education" and with cooperation agreements with other countries it wants “to make Turkish higher education a center of attraction in regional and global scales.”

He said the U.K. is a significant destination for education and the council wants to contribute to the Turkish higher education goal of internationalization by bringing together British universities and Turkish universities.

The internationalization strategy has seen the number of foreign students in Turkish universities jump to almost 150,000 from 50,000 recently, according to Er.

“The U.K. is an important country for Turkey. The relations between the two countries have a developing trend in recent years,” he said. “Turkey-U.K. trade capacity has reached $18.5 billion and it has got a rising graphic.”

Turkey’s Hacettepe University rector A. Haluk Ozen said a second higher education forum with the U.K. will be held in Turkey in about six months.

“Academic and student exchange and also joint projects with countries which are scientifically advanced such as the U.K. in biotechnology, nanotechnology and other newly developing fields in Turkey give great results,” he said.

“This relationship then will be further consolidated,” Ozen told Anadolu Agency.

The Head of English and Higher Education for the British Council in Turkey, Aysen Guven, said the attendance of 13 rectors from leading Turkish universities and representatives of 50 universities from the U.K. signifies the importance of the event.

“Today is a starting point,” she told Anadolu Agency, “[It] aims to increase the cooperation in higher education between the two countries” and to increase the mobility of students and researchers between universities.

Bogazici University rector Mehmet Ozkan said his school has more than 20 partnerships with British universities in the sense of academic movement for students and researchers, and more than 30 research projects.

His school is attending to focus on further cooperation with British universities on renewable energy and life sciences.

Turkey’s Ambassador to London Umit Yalcin also attended the event held in central London that was organized by the British Council and Turkey’s Council of Higher Education (YOK).

The New Perspectives: UK–Turkey higher education strategic partnerships forum saw the attendance the top 13 research universities in Turkey, which are Ankara University, Bilkent University, Bogazici University, Erciyes University, Gebze Technical University, Hacettepe University, Istanbul University, Istanbul University Cerrahpasa, Istanbul Technical University, Izmir Institute of Technology, Koc University, Middle East Technical University and Sabanci University.