On 30 May 2008, Federal Foreign Minister Dr Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Turkish counterpart at the time, Ali Babacan, together with the Federal Minister of Education and Research, Dr Annette Schavan, signed the Agreement on the foundation of a German-Turkish University in Turkey. Yesterday a consortium of 21 German universities was established to coordinate the specific academic organization of the German-Turkish University with the Turkish university representatives. This is another important step on the way towards the foundation of the first German-Turkish University in Turkey.

Federal Foreign Minister Dr Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued the following statement in Frankfurt today (23 June):

“The planned German-Turkish University represents a new dimension of German-Turkish cooperation on education and culture. The establishment of the university consortium is an important step towards enabling the German-Turkish University to be launched before the end of this year. I would like to thank my colleagues, Foreign Ministers Babacan and Davutoglu, as well as the current President of Turkey, Abdullah Gül. Their tremendous commitment to the project will ensure that the University can soon become reality.”

The German-Turkish University will issue a signal across the entire region. It builds on the traditionally close cooperation between Germany and Turkey in the academic sphere and will give it a new dimension. The German-Turkish University is to be established in Istanbul with an initial five faculties (engineering, law, science, economics and social sciences, humanities). It is primarily to target graduates of grammar schools in Turkey in which German is the language of tuition or which have German programmes, as well as German and Turkish graduates of grammar schools in Germany.