The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University is distinguished as the first faculty established under the name "Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences" among the existing state universities in Turkey, unlike the Faculties of Science and Letters or Literature.
The Faculty encompasses a wide range of educational disciplines, including 10 departments and 31 academic branches, from literature to history, art to philosophy, Eastern and Western philologies to sociology and psychology. Its aims include providing qualified human resources needed in almost every field of social sciences in Turkey, offering undergraduate and postgraduate education in line with the contemporary education system, conducting scientific research in various fields directly related to human and society, transforming theoretical knowledge and data obtained from these studies into practical applications that address everyday needs and problems, guiding contemporary thought, culture, and art for the benefit of the country, society, and individuals, and ensuring the provision of interdisciplinary courses required by other faculties within the university. Alphabetically, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences comprises the following departments:
It is also planned to open departments of Anthropology, Geography, and Folklore in the coming years.
Mission
Our Faculty aims to fulfill four fundamental missions: education, research, training scientists, and contributing to society. In addition to undergraduate education aimed at providing students with 'standard qualifications,' it equally emphasizes postgraduate education. Thus, it aims to play a significant role in training highly specialized human resources. Additionally, our Faculty aspires to become one of the centers that train high-quality individuals, enabling our country to gain a competitive advantage on the international stage.
In an increasingly shrinking and globalizing world, one of our primary goals is to train new scientists and teachers equipped with the knowledge and skills to represent our country successfully in national and international contexts in the field of social sciences, understanding both local and universal values, open to technological innovations, and comprehending the importance of scientific research and development.
Vision
The institutional vision of our Faculty is to position its identity internationally as a world university by adhering to fundamental goals such as training qualified scientists, providing an environment of free thought for its scientists, and guiding the protection of the society’s moral and ethical values through its scientific productions. Based on these core principles, it aims to establish high-quality research centers and ensure a free academic environment, developing flexible and autonomous administrative structures in this context.
Core Objective
To achieve sustainable success on a national and international scale, our Faculty aims to create an environment that brings together individuals with original ideas, claims, and visions to address the fundamental problem of "inability to form a knowledge tradition" faced by non-Western societies, aligning with the university’s goals. It seeks to establish an environment that encourages and enables the development of "epistemic communities," which are the root cause of this issue.
Departments
The discipline of the History of Science, which investigates the reflections of the continuous development and change humanity has undergone over millennia on science and scientific facts, occupies a unique place in the field of social sciences. The Department of History of Science aims to fill a significant gap in this field by studying the contributions of scientists from all nations, including the long-neglected contributions of Eastern societies, especially the Turks, to the scientific world.
Previously known as the "Department of Librarianship" in Turkey, this department has been restructured under the name "Department of Information and Document Management" to adapt to the technological advancements in documentation, information, and archiving in response to significant changes in the media world. The department consists of the following main branches:
It aims to accelerate the process of compiling, processing, organizing, accessing, disseminating, and delivering information to readers, responding to the increasing need for managing information and documents in the information age.
The Department of Eastern Languages and Literatures encompasses the following main branches:
It aims to teach, study, and translate the classical literatures of these languages and to train individuals capable of handling political, social, cultural, and economic relations between modern Turkey and these countries.
The Department of Philosophy includes the following main branches:
The department aims to make significant contributions to Turkish intellectual life by deeply examining classical and contemporary philosophical movements.
The department offers:
It aims to train translators and interpreters capable of performing written and oral translations between English-Turkish and Russian-Turkish in various fields (literature, law, economics, medicine, media, social sciences, natural sciences, etc.), equipped with a broad worldview, knowledge, and cultural and professional competence.
The Department of Psychology includes the following main branches:
It aims to train qualified psychologists to meet the needs of the country.
The Department of Art History, which includes the main branches of Byzantine Art and Turkish and Islamic Art, studies the historical development of plastic arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, and crafts), the main periods of Byzantine, Islamic, European, and Turkish arts, and the relationships and exchanges between these art forms and various geographical and cultural environments.
The Department of Sociology, which includes the following main branches:
It aims to train the scientists and researchers needed in this increasingly significant field by studying social relations shaped by social life, the principles determining the emergence and development of social institutions, and conducting field research through observation, interviews, and surveys.
The Department of History includes the following main branches:
It aims to establish a national historical consciousness by studying the rich history of the Turks across vast regions and long centuries.
The Department of Turkish Language and Literature includes the following main branches:
It aims to bridge the significant gap in this field, working in collaboration with existing departments to revive literary values, elevate Turkish language and literature to their rightful place among world languages and literatures, and ensure that Turkish is recognized not only as a literary language but also as a scientific one.
