54,000 International Students Study in Turkey

Turkey is one of the most attractive country to study for the students in the region. According to official body OSYM- (Turkish Universities Examination and Placement Board) statistics. Turkmenia is the number one country to send students to Turkey. Turkmen students number is 6.861 , followed by Azerbaijan 6,703 and then Iran 4,266.

Turkey had around 31,000 international students in 2002, after 12 years it reached to 54,000. The Turkish government is targeting to reach 200,000 international student by 2020. Turkey is very keen on to be in the top 15 countries by 2020, when the international students mobilty reach over 8 million by 2020 according to UNESCO reports.

There are 184 universities in Turkey, around 110 of them belong to state and the rest of 74 are private foundation universities. Only 10 years ago Turkey had 25 private foundation, and less than 70 state universities.

Turkish universities have a total of 5,439,300 students, 54,000 of them are international students which is only 1% of total. While this percentage reaches almost 10% in many OECD countries such as USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and France.

The largest universities in Turkey  in terms of total students numbers;

İstanbul Üniversity;  102, 704

Gazi Üniversity;  76,442

Marmara Üniversity  74, 711

Turkish universities have 54,000 international student from 93 different countries. Istanbul University has around 4,519 international student, followed by Ankara University (2,439),and Marmara University (2,439) .

After Turkmenia, Iran and Azerbaijan, the following countries sending students to Turkish Universities;

Northern Cyprus:  3,800
Germany:  1,417
Greece:  1,340
Bulgaria: 1,231
Mongolia: 1.000
Russia:  800
Syria:  500 =  %1,2 (However there is a big increase  after the war in Syria. Turkish government decided to allow Syrian students to register at Turkish universities without any exam or any fee )
Iraq:  400 =  %1
Nigeria: 250

Source; Anatolian News Agency  March 2014