On 1 April 2010, the Turkish Parliament adopted the founding charter of the German-Turkish University (DTU). This fundamental step on the way to establishing the  DTU was preceded by an intergovernmental agreement ratified by Turkey and Germany last year. The agreement provides that Germany will make substantial contributions to academia and teaching and, in particular, to teaching German at the new university in Istanbul. The DTU shall significantly strengthen the scientific cooperation between both countries.

A German university consortium, including 26 universities and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), has been involved in establishing the DTU, which  is projected to begin its teaching and research activities in October of this year. In the long term, it aims to enrol up to 20,000 students. Six German universities will act as lead institutions in coordinating the development of the different faculties of DTU: TU Berlin (engineering), University of Potsdam (natural sciences), FU Berlin (law), University of Cologne (economics and social sciences), University of Heidelberg (humanities/cultural sciences) and University of Bielefeld (language centre).

The German-Turkish University is joining the club of German universities abroad. In the last decade, a considerable number of “export projects” has been realised: the German-Kazakh University (DKU) in Almaty (founded in 1999); the Thai-German Graduate School of Engineering in Bangkok (2001); the German University in Cairo (GUC, 2003); the German-Jordanian University (GJU) in Amman (2005); the German University of Technology in Oman, Maskat (2007); and the Vietnamese-German University (VGU) in Saigon (2009)

DAAD

DAAD