• Applications for Turkish Government’s Scholarship Programme open until 20 February 2022

The Pan Afrikanist Watchman

A once-in-a-year opportunity has opened for interested international Batswana students and researchers to apply for the Turkish Government’s Scholarship Programme for higher education.

The Turkish Embassy in Botswana has announced that applications for the next academic year will be accepted until 20 February 2022. Candidates who meet the application criteria can submit their applications online through “https://www.turkiyeburslari.gov.tr,” until 20 February 2022.

Every year, the Turkish Government offers scholarships to thousands of students all over the world to continue their undergraduate or postgraduate studies in Turkish universities over a variety of academic programmes.

Turkish Ambassador Ms Meltem Buyukkarakas encourages young Batswana who wish to study overseas and discover their potential in Turkish universities, to take this opportunity to apply to the “Turkish scholarships” programme. 

She explained that the programme is a “government-funded and competitive higher education scholarship programme offered to successful international students and researchers” and that, “the scholarship aims to develop Turkey’s cooperation with other countries and to contribute to regional and global development in many fields.”

Ambassador Buyukkarakas highlighted that “the Turkish Scholarship programme is unique in that it not only covers school tuition fees but is also inclusive of monthly financial support, accommodation, health insurance and a once-off flight ticket as well as an initial year of Turkish language study.

“The programme provides a university and department placement for the candidates in their intended area of study. Apart from offering a university education, the Turkish Government Scholarships programme aims to provide students with the benefits of social, cultural and academic extra-curricular activities while they are in Turkey.

Ambassador Buyukkarakas said that in recent years, several Batswana students have also been granted scholarships for undergraduate, Masters’ or PhD degrees in Turkish universities in numerous fields such as international trade, health administration, public relations, sociology, agriculture, food technologies, energy and others.

She said she is “happy to see a growing interest among Batswana students in the Turkish scholarships programme and believes that Turkey can become one of the top education destinations for young Batswana in the near future.”

Ambassador Buyukkarakas emphasised the readiness of the Turkish Government to develop cooperation with Botswana with the common goal of providing a high standard of education and growth opportunities for its people.

To this aim, last year Turkey and Botswana signed a bilateral agreement in the field of Higher Education, which envisages cooperation between the Universities of the two countries, scholarship opportunities, joint academic programmes, conferences, exchanges of students and academicians.

She expressed confidence that “we will see concrete outcomes of this engagement in the near future and a significant increase in the numbers of Batswana students benefiting from the Turkish scholarships.”

The Ambassador also said that last year in 2021 Botho University signed cooperation protocols with two distinguished private Turkish universities; Bahcesehir University based in Istanbul and Yasar University in Izmir.

She stated: “We are willing to expand this cooperation model to other universities in Botswana. The recently-signed bilateral agreement will pave the way for enhanced cooperation in education, science and technology.”

The Ambassador said that studying in Turkey is both affordable and competitive. According to the current figures, Turkey has become one of the most international student-welcoming countries in the world with approximately 150 thousand international students, 17 thousand of which are scholarship students last year.

Medicine, engineering and social sciences are the leading fields preferred by international students in Turkey. Over the last decade, 14.000 students from many African countries have been awarded Turkish scholarships in various academic programmes.