ESN turkey
written by
Selin GUR
»» Date of first section established in the country: 2005 »» Date of inclusion in ESN International: 2005 »» Creation of National Board: 2007 »» Number of sections 2015: 43
Turkish Universities applied to join in the Erasmus Student Exchange Program and the first students who were sent abroad returned to the country in 2004.When they were abroad they attended to ESN events and met with volunteers of ESN. With the knowledge and inspiration they got from them they started to build similar organizations. ITU(Istanbul Technical University) Erasmus Club, which is one of the first Erasmus clubs in Turkey, was founded in 2005 by Andım Doldurucu and started to work immediately. Right after, Andım applied to make Turkey a member of ESN and attended the Council of National Representatives meeting in Bratislava in 2005. With her candidate presentation she got the all the votes of the National Representatives and became the first ESN member of Turkey and Andım Doldurucu started to work as the first National Representative of ESN Turkey.
resentative, WPA, treasurer, and public relations. In 2013, the Standing Orders for National Committees, Events, Projects and Coordinators proposed by two alumni of ESN Bilkent (Emre Yavuz and Salih Odabasi) have been approved by the NP and since then, there are committees working coordinately with the board members. Different NB members have different committees like the committee system in international level. These committees aims to have a constant human resource and contribution to the Network from every level. Currently, after 9 years in the Network, in 2015 ESN Turkey has 40 sections. Since the day ESN Turkey became a member of Erasmus Student Network, it has unified hundreds of exchange students in Turkey.
Turkey
ESN Turkey also accomplished things which were the first and one of a kind European-wide. ESN Turkey achieved short term projects like ESN House Istanbul, and ESN Turkey Meeting Point Istanbul. In 2009, to create corporate solutions for the accommodation problems of Erasmus students who come to Istanbul, ESN Turkey created the ESN House Istanbul project with its own resources. Project give the opportunity to the network to have a big ESN office with bathroom and kitchen. The whole building was rented and the rooms were given to incoming Erasmus students to reasonable prices. This project was active during 2008-2009 and 2009-2010. Later on in 2012, ESN Turkey had a meeting point in Istanbul. ESN Turkey Meeting Point was located in Taksim, the center of Istanbul, this project continued for a year with different ESN Turkey sections’ parties, movie nights, karaoke nights and so on. Both in ESN House and ESN Turkey Meeting Point ESN Turkey had its office that students would be able to find and meet ESNers. ESN Turkey Meeting Point was used specifically to promote and develop corporate identity and the usage of ESN card. Meeting Point was also used for ESN Turkey’s sponsors’ promotion location with available flyers, and posters at the venue.
/ˈtɜr.ki/; Turkish: Türkiye, pronounced /tyrkije/)
In 2005-2006 with rapid spread of the Erasmus Programme in Turkish Universities, students who completed their terms abroad started to establish first Erasmus Clubs and applied to become a section of ESN. First elected National Board started to work on April 2007 and it consisted 7 board members; president İlker Taner, vice president Zafer Türkmendağ, national representative Sergül Özatalar, vice national representative Onur Ozel, public relations
Ceren Yener, secretary Simge Gedizoğlu, and treasurer Çağrı Çobanoğlu. ESN Turkey board has kept the NB member number 7 since then, however the positions has changed. Currently NB consists the roles of president, vice president, national representative, vice national rep-
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Another project which started to be developed in since 2012 is ESNinBusiness. ESNinBusiness aims to level up ESN’s appearance on business world and provide permanent human resource to companies. Project team does presentation about ESN and the project itself to well known companies in different fields, shows the advantages that the company might have with an employee with ESN experience, gives the opportunity to the companies