As being the first university of Turkish Republic, Ankara University aims to keep its position as one of the most respected higher education institutions nation-wide and strengthening its international cooperations. Our university has an important number of international academic cooperations from all over the world, which have been serving for mobility of students and staff, and also the research projects for many years. The diversity of the academic fields in our university let us built international cooperations from neighbouring countries to Far East and Latin America. Nevertheless, Europe takes an important share of all international activities in accordance with the implementation of Bologna Process.
One of the main strategic targets for internationalisation of Ankara University is becoming one of the well-known universities in European Higher Education Area. In order to achieve this goal, we are continuously developing the cooperations with European universities in terms of quantity and quality. In addition, number of projects under the Programme is increasing every year. Number of cooperations intensifies on Germany, which has also strong connections with Turkey in economic and social aspects. This has a positive impact on student and staff mobility and gives floor to develop common projects under Programme. On the other hand, as the second leading country for mobility, Poland has an important partner country for us and this partnership is planned to be strengthened with the procejts under Programme. Neighbouring countries like Greece and Bulgaria are in the target group of partners. In recent years, some cooperations took place for projects under the Programme with these countries. A shared history and close cultural relationships, makes each country attractive both for the students and staff in terms of mobility and project activities. This is also valid for the cooperations other than EU Programmes.
Turkey, as a regional power, is attractive for the students of the Balkans, Caucasia, Middle East regions an Africa. This is one of the reasons why every year applicants from these countries are in tendency to increase both for credit and degree mobilities so, focusing on a strategy to improve these cooperations is necessary. On the other hand, Turkey is a bridge for the beneficiaries of the Programme who are originally from one of these regions and actually is not from a participant country. Thus, many students may find a chance to experience European academic and social life by being our students and benefiting from the Programme. In order to maintain the cooperation between different units for internationalisation, a special unit of our university is in charge, namely “Foreign Relations and Internationalisation Office”. Our internationalisation policy will also take place in the Strategic Plan for 2019-2023.
Ankara University has various academic units composed of 18 faculties, 13 colleges and vocational schools and 13 graduate schools and institutes in total. This gives us an opportunity to build inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary international cooperation projects with partners. EU Office and Scientific Research Projects Unit are responsible for the coordination of the projects. These offices provide support to the academic units with necessary information about the application procedures for projects and carry out the secretariat. The number of international cooperation projects, both for EU and non-EU countries, is an important indicator for our yearly performance programme, in accordance with the strategic plan. The change in the number of these cooperations is evaluated with the reasons. Academic units and staff are encouraged to develop new cooperation projects and projects under the Programme takes an important part of all projects. The results achieved by the projects are announced in different ways, such as university’s monthly journal, web page and e-mail list. This helps to increase the recognition of the projects and the Programme itself, so has a potential to create motivation for the rest of the academic staff.