International Relations Bilkent University

Overview

International Relations (IR) from Bilkent University is a relatively new discipline. Its importance, however, has been rapidly growing in recent decades. All of us are affected by the international environment and foreign policy decisions. International issues are becoming increasingly significant, complex, and diversified.

These courses emphasize increased competence in IR specialties such as International Law, Diplomatic History, Politics of International Economy, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations Theory, Global Issues and Area Studies. The teaching objectives are to maintain the crucial balance between theory and practice and to ensure that every student is exposed to the latest understanding of all the key IR issues and to the conceptual and analytical frameworks underlying them.

The core set of courses provides the fundamentals of the field of IR while a wide variety of elective courses, to be taken from the department as well as from the Departments of Political Science, Economics and Management, permits students to develop a program that will meet personal needs and special career interests.

For students who choose to pursue a more advanced degree in the field, the Department offers a Master's degree program and a doctoral degree program with considerable flexibility for graduate students to develop specialized academic programs to suit their needs and interests.

Careers

Career opportunities in the field increase as Turkey's foreign relations diversify. The diplomatic service and other sectors of public bureaucracy continue to be an important source of employment. In addition to this, the media, private sector, professional organizations, and universities need increasing numbers of specialists in international affairs.