Facts and figures

Turkey has more than eight million students enrolled across more than 200 higher education institutions¹. Median age of Turkey’s 83.6 million people is 33 years². Turkey’s Council of Higher Education oversees higher education institutions in Turkey¹. The past two decades have seen a significant expansion of dedicated departments and centers for molecular life science research within the university system³.

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) is the primary funder of research in the country. Publicly funded grant, exchange, and scholarship programmes promote a wide range of activities⁴. These include research, technology transfer, and university-industry collaborations⁴. There is also support for international mobility, including fellowships for established and young international researchers. Under Horizon 2020, Turkey had a strong participation in European Research Council (ERC) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programmes⁵. The country scores favorably on key innovation measures such as creative outputs⁶, job-to-job mobility of human resources in science and technology⁷, and government support for business R&D⁷. The proportion of innovative firms in Turkey has also increased substantially during the past two decades². In 2019 Turkey averaged 550 new startups each year².

In 2020, gross expenditure on R&D in Turkey was 1.09% of GDP⁸. Business enterprise financed 49.4% of GERD expenditure, the Turkish government 33.6%, 3.5% was funded from abroad, while 13.5% was provided by other national funding sources⁹. Turkey has set out ambitious plans to increase its national research and innovation capacity. The country aims to increase GERD expenditure to 1.8% of GDP by 2023¹⁰. It also plans to increase the number of high-tech products, drive international collaborations, and build more human resources¹¹.