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CSS Student Colloquium: Adil Aygün

Science Diplomacy and Opportunities for Universities to Enrich Their Independency: Case of Polar Research Center at Istanbul Technical University

Info about event

Time

Friday 18 January 2019,  at 13:15 - 14:00

Abstract

International relations have been increasingly involving scientific and technological dimensions. It is already known by political actors that science has been playing a key role in Hard Power; scientific researches to increase military capabilities. Furthermore, the major international problems of 21st century; such as climate change, food security, epidemics…, caused political actors to give more importance to capacity of science to promote their Soft Power in international relations. Science Diplomacy particularly focuses on the capacity of scientific practice within the context of Soft Power. Polar regions can be given as examples for this capacity of scientific practice. Because of their great geopolitical position, politics over Arctic and Antarctic are hot-topics in international relations. Even the countries which are thousand miles away from polar regions wish to have an influence on discussions about Arctic and Antarctic. Republic of Turkey is one of these countries who has been lately giving more and more importance to its foreign affairs over polar regions. Since 2000s the activity of Turkish research groups has been increasing in Arctic and the first expedition to Antarctic was organized in 2017. The Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology has launched the first four years National Polar Science Program(NPSP) in 2018, and Istanbul Technical University has been charged to manage the NPSP. In line with the diplomatic importance of scientific practice in polar regions, I believe the relation between ITU and the political will in Turkey has been co-produced. In my colloquium, I will talk about Science Diplomacy as an academic field in general and highlight the co-production of relationship between university and government within the context of Science Diplomacy.

Coffee/tea, cake and fruit will be served at 1 pm.