A shared academic basin between Turkey and the Arab world

The developments Turkey has experienced over the past twenty years, which entitle it to make claims about the coming century, are undoubtedly being watched by the whole world as well. For the Arab-Islamic world in particular, the distance Turkey has covered is judged worth not merely watching in every respect; it is also nurturing great hopes.

Some of these developments may also be a reflection of the accumulated knowledge and performance our academic world has put forth. But more importantly, the academic world's keeping pace more actively with this development Turkey is experiencing, and even leading it in its own field, should be both our universities' responsibility and the measure of their performance.

Considering Turkey's increasingly diverse and deepening relations with the Arab world, from politics to the economy and from the defense industry to culture, the question of where universities stand in this picture gains more importance. Why should there not emerge an academic basin between the universities of the two sides in which students, professors, researchers and knowledge circulate far more intensely, and in which joint research and scientific production are increasingly institutionalized? More precisely, why should this broad geography, which historically already had a strong circulation of learning and culture, not be turned once again, with today's university capacities, into a field of strong academic interaction?

A new opportunity is emerging before Turkey that can carry to a much more advanced stage the international accumulation that has been forming in higher education for years. Beyond the classical model in which universities merely admit students and countries try to produce science within their own borders, I am speaking of a broad academic basin in which students, academics and researchers move back and forth between Turkey and its near geography, research facilities are shared and knowledge is produced together. A step taken in Ankara in recent days showed that this is by no means a distant possibility.

Some time ago, in this column, we wrote a few pieces on universities, and in one of them, on the occasion of the new restrictions America has imposed on foreign students, we touched on another subject. One of the most important sources of America's scientific and technological superiority was that for nearly a century it had been able to attract the world's brightest people to its universities. Today the beginning of a reversal of this policy may also change the routes of academic circulation in the world. It is unthinkable that Turkey, with its international student population approaching 380 thousand, would stay out of this change. Moreover, Turkey's advantage is not just a matter of numbers. In many places we go, from Syria to Bangladesh and from Afghanistan to Sudan, we meet people who graduated from Turkish universities and have taken on important responsibilities in their countries.

Right after these discussions, quite meaningful news came from the Council of Higher Education (YÖK).

YÖK President Prof. Dr. Erol Özvar met on 2 September in Ankara with representatives of the League of Arab States and ambassadors of Arab countries. At the meeting, held under the name Higher Education Consultation Meeting, the launch of a new and institutional era of cooperation between Turkey and the Arab world in higher education, science and research was discussed.

The announced program is quite comprehensive. Mobility of students, academics, researchers and administrative staff will be increased; joint bachelor's, master's and doctoral programs will be developed; joint research centers and scientific networks will be established. Cooperation is also envisaged in quality assurance, accreditation, and the recognition of diplomas and equivalency procedures.

More importantly, the areas to which the cooperation will be directed consist of the most strategic issues of today and the future: artificial intelligence, health sciences, engineering, renewable energy, water resources, agriculture, food security, climate change and digital transformation.

That Özvar said joint scientific work should not remain in laboratories but should be turned into "new technologies, production capacity, qualified employment and social benefit" also shows that the matter is not conceived as consisting only of academic visits.

For the institutional continuity of the initiative, it has been decided that the Turkey-Arab Higher Education Forum will be held at least once every two years, alternately in Turkey and in a member country of the League of Arab States. In addition, a working group made up of three representatives from each side will prepare a joint Action Plan covering priority areas, activities, participating institutions, funding sources and the implementation timetable.

It is here that one must see the real opportunity this initiative carries.

Relations between Turkey and the Arab world have developed very seriously in recent years, from trade to tourism and from politics to the defense industry. By contrast, it is hard to say that relations between universities have been institutionalized to the same extent. Yet when Turkey and the Arab world are considered together, a vast geography emerges that houses hundreds of universities, millions of students and a very serious scientific human resource.

Moreover, this geography also has common problems. Water scarcity, food security, energy, climate change, urbanization, migration and the transformation artificial intelligence is bringing about in working life are not issues that the universities of a single country alone can solve. It is precisely here that joint research programs gain meaning.

Turkey's international higher education policy, too, now needs to move to a new stage. Bringing more students to Turkey is undoubtedly important but is not sufficient on its own. As we have said before, these students need to be seen not within the narrow migration and security perspective of the category of "foreign student" but as Turkey's future academic, economic and cultural partners. The time has now come to add to this reciprocal academic mobility and joint knowledge production.

The historical ground for this between Turkey and the Arab world is not to be dismissed either. Istanbul, Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Aleppo, Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina were not centers of learning cut off from one another for centuries. They were parts of a broad geography of learning in which scholars, students, books and ideas circulated. Today's university system of course operates under entirely different conditions, but there is no mental obstacle before us to creating contemporary and institutional forms of this circulation that existed in the past.

We know how important a role the academic mobility Europe created through Erasmus has played in European societies getting to know one another. Between Turkey and the Arab world, too, a much more ambitious system of academic circulation, suited to our own needs and capacities, can be built.

In this respect I find the initiative YÖK has launched with the League of Arab States important. Its success will of course not depend on the number of protocols signed or meetings held. What will be decisive is the opening of joint doctoral programs, the research centers genuinely functioning, the reciprocal circulation of professors and students, and above all the extent to which jointly produced scientific knowledge is reflected in the lives of societies.

The opening of Turkish universities to the world is one of the essential elements of Turkey's opening to the world. This new academic opening now on the agenda with the Arab world offers the chance to fortify the existing human and historical bonds through joint scientific production. The step YÖK has taken must be strongly embraced, and our universities, too, must join the process with projects suited to this horizon.