The TÜRGEV Academy Student Symposium, held for the first time, brought together TÜRGEV Academy students from various disciplines.
The TÜRGEV Academy Program (TAP), which functions as a second university for students living in TÜRGEV dormitories—providing academic-level education so they can gain competencies beyond their fields of specialization and create their own areas of interest and research—expanded its scope with the first-ever student symposium.
The program, aimed at undergraduates, offers two main modules—Islamic Studies and Social Sciences—and enables participants to understand different disciplines together in addition to teaching the principles of scholarly work. Beyond these modules, the program also includes activities held throughout the year, such as seminars, workshops, camps, and excursions.
At the symposium, where university students presented papers on topics they chose from these two main modules, the audience included TÜRGEV Board Chair Dr. Fatmanur Altun, General Headquarters staff, academy instructors, students’ families, and classmates.
In her opening speech, Board Chair Dr. Fatmanur Altun emphasized the importance of the academy and TÜRGEV’s goal, stating, “Above all, we want to bring a different approach to knowledge into the world’s agenda by investing in and increasing scholarship.” She noted that the Academy Program emerged not merely as positive discrimination in favor of female students but as a result of love for and quest for truth and knowledge, and she affirmed that every effort would be made to open pathways and provide opportunities to reach genuine knowledge.
Continuing with “We have a greater ideal. We have a mission to establish truth as guidance on earth and to found justice as an institution,” Dr. Altun said that Muslims need to have a response to the direction of the world and societies, and that they aim to change the perspective on scholarship that has taken root in the Islamic world over the past 200 to 300 years.
Presentations on topics such as Makâsıdü’ş Şerîa, an evaluation of whether the gate of ijtihad is closed or open, the Palestine-Israel conflict in the city of Hebron, and the reasons for renewal movements in religions through Reformation and Islamism were handled with an interdisciplinary approach. These presentations demonstrated students’ abilities to interpret knowledge in different fields and to express it, and they encouraged knowledge sharing, leaving a highly positive impact.
With the TÜRGEV Academy Student Symposium planned to be held annually, the aim is to provide an applied forum for students’ academic development.
