ORSAM Middle Eastern Studies Summer School Completed

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ORSAM held a summer school program from July 1-15, 2009. Fifty-six undergraduate and graduate students from the international relations, political science, translation and interpretation, and history departments of twenty-five different universities located in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Konya, Trabzon, Adana, Lefke and Essen attended seminars on a variety of different subjects for two weeks. The courses were given by ORSAM experts and advisors, and professors from some universities. These courses were offered: Globalization and the Middle-East; Security Assessment and the Security Problems of Turkey; Foreign Policy Analysis; Diaspora; the Middle East; Iranian Foreign Policy; Shiite Geopolitics; The Political, Economic and Social Situation of the Gulf Countries; Current Developments in the Middle East (Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon); Turkmen History and Culture; The Iraqi Turkmen Movement; Project Cycle; Campaign Management and Political Communication. The participants were awarded ORSAM internship certificates at the end of the program. ORSAM‘s Director Hasan Kanbolat expressed his uneasiness about the future of Turkey’s departments of international relations while making the closing statement. Kanbolat stated that the number of these departments is rapidly increasing, and that they fail to maintain the educational standards which meet the demands of the students since they are opened without preparing the necessary infrastructure. Kanbolat stressed that the departments of international relations’ failure to promote regional specialization or specialization in different fields in the curriculum of is one of the deficiencies, and added that analysts, strategists, researchers and think-tankers are lacking in Turkey and overcoming this deficiency is the duty of the new generation. Kanbolat emphasized ORSAM’s readiness to support all student research on both departmental reorganization for international relations and in the field of strategy.  

The applications for the second ORSAM Summer School to be run next year will be accepted beginning in May of 2010.

INTERNS WHO COMPLETED ORSAM SUMMER SCHOOL 2009

Mine Akar

Bilkent University, Department of International Relations

Burcu Zeynep Aydın

Cukurova University, Department of International Relations

Pınar Aylanga

Ege University, Department of International Relations

Natik Bakış

Ege University, Department of International Relations

Hami Balcı

Hacettepe University, Department of International Relations

Kemal Gökhan Barış

Kocaeli University, Department of International Relations

Ferit Belder

Marmara University, Department of International Relations

Şeyma Biçer

Cukurova University Department of International Relations

Abdülrezak Bilgin

Ankara University, Department of International Relations

Pelin Bingöl

Yeditepe University, Department of Political Science and International Relations

Nur Betül Çalık

METU, Middle East Studies Graduate Program

Zeynep Çelik

METU, Department of Political Science and Public Administration