Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) was founded in 1773 during the reign of Mustafa III under the name Mühendishâne-i Bahrî-i Hümâyûn. With its 250-year history, İTÜ is an educational institution that shines from Kosovo to Manchuria as a university of engineering and architecture.
Following İTÜ, Karadeniz Technical University and METU were established.
İTÜ also laid the foundations for these schools.
The "flying professors" is a concept dating back to the 1960s.
A professor of strength of materials or reinforced concrete would arrive in Trabzon by plane, teach a month's worth of lectures in two days, and then return to their students at İTÜ.
If the Turkish contracting sector has an annual overseas project volume of 20-25 billion dollars, İTÜ, KTÜ, and METU are the biggest stakeholders in this success.
Especially İTÜ.
Afterward, many more universities housing engineering and architecture faculties were opened.
However, none of them were able to create a unique identity.
They became ordinary.
Those established in Istanbul and Ankara could not escape becoming ordinary either.
As Turkey's recent policies have also supported this trend of mediocrity, there are few schools left, other than İTÜ and METU, that can train competitive engineers and architects.
I recently visited the Haydarpaşa Train Station building and its annexes.
It still has a magnificent atmosphere.
When you enter the building, you feel as if you have stepped into Deutsche Bahn.
Its historical texture and mystical scent transport you back 100 years.
Businesspeople who see what I see are also salivating.
They immediately start doing the math.
Calculating the number of rooms, the number of tourists, the price per night in euros, and multiplying it all, their eyes widen with greed.
In short,
The Haydarpaşa Station and its annexes, which all the greedy are chasing to turn into a hotel, are waiting to become a brilliant engineering university with both their history and campus. And if it were a university without Second Republicans inside, it would be even better.
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