President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said six Turkish universities, two of them in the top 300, entered the world’s top 500 in 2026, and that the medium-term goal is for at least two to join the world’s top 100, speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2026-2027 academic year in Ankara.
He said the number of universities had risen from 76 to 208 over the past 24 years, dormitories from 190 to 877 and bed capacity from 182,000 to 1 million, adding that opposing the spread of universities means opposing equal opportunity in education. Erdoğan said vocational schools in organized industrial zones had reached employment rates of up to 90% and that a new workplace-based vocational training model would start with 120,000 students in 185 associate degree programs.
He also warned that while access to information has never been easier thanks to artificial intelligence, “the reliability of the information provided by artificial intelligence is often questioned.”