MA in Turkish Studies (in English)

The Turkish Studies MA Program (MATS for short) was the first master’s program that was launched by the History Department. It started admitting students in Fall 2017, and has continued to this day. As the name implies, it is not a History program, narrowly defined, but an interdisciplinary program, receiving strong support from the Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Economics departments, and also containing a lot of History. It has two versions: with thesis and without thesis. In both cases, its purpose is to attract three kinds of applicants, though the MATS without thesis is likely to prove more attractive for the first two groups (a and b) over the coming years:

(a) A certain group of international students, possibly but not only from the West, who would like to acquire a degree of academically grounded familiarity with Turkey’s history, economy, politics and culture, and who on that basis are likely to look for employment in or about Turkey, perhaps in multinational corporations doing business with/in Turkey, or ngo’s working in Turkey, or in the service or education sectors or other lines of work.

(b) Another group of international students, more probably from the West, who are in the process of pursuing PhD’s in Islamic, Middle Eastern, Turkish or Ottoman History, and who by spending two years in Istanbul and IHU can take lots of specialized courses in all these fields, including their relevant research languages, for tuition fees and other living costs that are far lower than in Europe or the US.

(c) Also a group of academically oriented Turkish students who are not sure about which PhD to pursue, and who would therefore like some more time to explore History (including extra time for languages and more in depth readings) as well as neighboring disciplines in the Social Sciences.