Over 1,300 Turkish scientists now working abroad

ISTANBUL

76 percent of 1,335 tcientists work for prestigious universities, 12 percent work for research centers, and 10 percent are at leading companies.

A total of 1,335 Turkish scientists are currently working in 47 different countries around the world, according to data released by Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).

“Our scientists mostly reside in the United States. We want to benefit from our scientists’ works conducted in both Turkey and abroad. We do not see them as a brain drain, but as brain power,” Science, Industry, and Technology Minister Nihat Ergün said in comments published yesterday in daily Radikal.

Prestigious foreign universities

A database compiled by TÜBİTAK of Turkish scientists working abroad revealed that 76 percent of the 1,335 total scientists work for prestigious universities such as Harvard, Oxford and Yale, 12 percent work for research centers, while 10 percent are at leading global companies and institutions such as Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, General Electric, BMW and NASA.

The data also shows that 652 of the scientists are working in the United States, 145 are in Germany and 101 are in Canada. Turkish scientists are also working in the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Norway, Spain, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and the United Arab Emirates.

Ergün said they were working on a draft law with the Higher Education Board (YÖK) that would create opportunities to more efficiently benefit from the work of Turkish scientists living abroad.

Database
The minister said a unit formed within TÜBİTAK
had made contact with Turkish scientists from all over the world and included them in the
database.
“We would like to establish a network both among [Turkish scientists abroad] and between them and Turkey. The scientists we reached got excited and said they had received calls from Turkey for the first time. So far, we have reached 1,335 names from 47 countries and included them in our database. This work will be updated each year. And now we have collected all of them in a book,” Ergün said.