Kadir Has University

Kadir Has University is a private university in Istanbul, Turkey that was opened in 1997. It is named after an industrialist whose philanthropic foundation provided the funding for the university to be opened.

The institution’s main campus is in Fatih, a historic district of Istanbul that contains all the local authority buildings. It has a 35,000 square metre building which was once a factory for TEKEL, the state-operated tobacco firm. The restoration of the former factory, which took four years, received an award from European cultural heritage organisation Europa Nostra.

There are five faculties at the university: engineering; science and humanities; economics and administrative sciences; communication and law and fine arts. There are also several vocational schools at the institution.

The schools of applied sciences, technical sciences and social sciences are based on a campus in Selimpaşa, about 50 kilometres west of Istanbul and on the banks of the Marmara Sea.

Kadir Has University has Erasmus partnerships with many different universities across Europe, including Birkbeck, University of London and Universitat zu Köln. Students can also take part in exchange programmes with institutions in other countries across the world, including the United States, Canada, South Africa and China.

Research institutes at the university include the Centre for Energy and Sustainable Development, the Gender and Women’s Studies Centre, and the Centre for Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection.

The university’s Fatih campus is also home to the Rezan Has museum, named after the wife of Kadir Has. The museum features an 11th Century cistern, which is one of the few Byzantine structures outside the old city walls, as well as the ruins of an Ottoman era bath.