Abstract:

Our Republic founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in the opening speech of the Great National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1937, expressed the need for the establishment of the University of Ankara for the central region of our country and the establishment of a university around Van Lake in the eastern region to continue the reform of higher education starting with the University of Istanbul in the west. But the II. The university, which was considered to be founded in the east due to the World War and other various reasons, has not been established in any way, although it has been initiated several times. According to the report prepared in 1952 by a commission established under the name "Eastern University Inspection Commission" after the war, the idea of establishing a university distributed to the provinces of Van, Elazığ, Diyarbakır and Erzurum was accepted instead of establishing a single province university in the east, taking into account the needs of the period. Finally, the first university of the Eastern Anadolu region was founded on 7 June 1957 in Erzurum under the name of Atatürk University.

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