Turkey’s Gaziantep University to open faculties in northern Syria

ANKARA

Gaziantep University, located in the southeastern border province of Gaziantep, is to establish three faculties in three Syrian towns, a presidential decree published on the Official Gazette showed on Oct. 4.

According to the decree, the university will open an Islamic studies faculty in Azaz, an education faculty in Afrin and a faculty of economics and administrative sciences in Al-Bab.

Gaziantep University had opened a vocational training school in Jarablus in 2018 and applied to Turkey’s Higher Education Board to grant permission to open new faculties in Syria due to increasing demand.

Turkey has previously built hospitals, restored schools and trained personnel in northwest Syria, and Turkish media reports say it is planning to build an industrial zone in the region to create jobs for 7,000 people.

All three towns are in northwestern Syria, west of the Euphrates River and broadly north of Aleppo, in regions to which Turkey has twice sent forces in the last three years to drive out the YPG and ISIL, to provide what it calls “security” along its borders.

In the last two years, Turkey’s Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch operations ousted the YPG and ISIL from the region, allowing hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians to return to the Syrian towns.

The YPG is deemed as the Syrian offshoot of illegal PKK, which Turkey, the EU, and the U.S. has listed as a terrorist organization.