President Erdoğan spoke at the "2023-2024 Academic Year Opening Ceremony"
Speaking at the opening ceremony of academic year 2023-2024, President Erdoğan said: “By increasing the number of universities from 76 to 208, we paved the way for every young person to attend higher education in the nearest place to their homes. We facilitated the spread of knowledge, culture and science to all our 81 provinces through our universities.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of academic year 2023-2024 at Beştepe Nation’s Convention and Culture Center in Ankara.
“Universities, which are regarded to be centers of excellence for the society, have roles beyond providing individuals with professional formation,” President Erdoğan said. “Universities are not only centers of science, but also universal institutions which have their own traditions, contribute to the intellectual development of students and enable them to discover their talents. Universities change both the fortune and history of a country with the generations they raise.”
Noting that universities, which are the engines of human, economic and social development, constitute the driving force of international competition for countries, President Erdoğan said: “It is a shallow perspective to see universities only as a place to learn science or profession. The main function of a university is to lead the transfer and development of culture, to build the system of ideas of the era, and to raise the level of society in every field. Therefore, university is an institution that is not outside of society and life, but at the very center of it.”
“By increasing the number of universities from 76 to 208, we paved the way for every young person to attend higher education in the nearest place to their homes. We facilitated the spread of knowledge, culture and science to all our 81 provinces through our universities,” President Erdoğan said.
“SCIENCE DIPLOMACY IS OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE”
“Science diplomacy is of critical importance to increase Türkiye’s international recognition and improve intercultural interaction and communication. We are pleased with the steps taken so far by the Council of Higher Education in the field of science diplomacy,” President Erdoğan said. “We believe it is important to support this process with new initiatives and projects. We encourage our universities to work on concrete cooperation projects with their counterparts abroad. We expect the development of joint scientific projects that will enhance the economic, social development and cultural cooperation of our country.”
“In addition to the already-existing cooperation with Europe, we see benefit in intensifying your contacts with your counterparts in the Turkic and Islamic world. We support the cooperation processes of our universities with higher education institutions in the Islamic world to ensure academic mobility. We attach importance to increasing the activities of the Turkic Universities Union and multiplying the number of member universities of the Union. The contributions of our higher education institutions to science diplomacy by establishing academic units and joint universities abroad is evident. Our government fully supports the steps you will take in this direction,” President Erdoğan noted.
Voicing his pleasure over the Turkish universities’ rise to the top of international university rankings, President Erdoğan said: “In the most recent ranking, Anatolian universities as well as our well-established universities were included. Inshallah, these achievements will continue to increase in the coming period.”
