IKV’s EU Information Centre, in cooperation with the Centre for Modern Turkish Studies and European Studies at Istanbul Şehir University organised a panel on the experience of working and living in Turkey as a European student or academic within the framework of their European Talks on 22 December 2016. British Assoc. Prof. Catherine Macmillan, who works at the European Studies department at Yeditepe University, Austrian Alexander Heinz, who interns with the Centre of Modern Turkish Studies at Istanbul Şehir University and German Constance Döring, who is a student at Istanbul Şehir University and currently interning with IKV talked about their personal experiences in Turkey.

Assoc. Prof. Catherine Macmillan underlined that she has never regretted her decision to leave Spain and visit Istanbul and decided to stay and pursue first her master’s degree and subsequently her Ph.D. in European Studies at Marmara University. Macmillan said that integrating into Turkish society was easy both at the workplace as well as at home and that she gets along well with her neighbours.

Having grown up in the Austrian countryside, Alexander Heinz shared Macmillan’s sentiment but emphasised that despite Istanbul’s crowdedness and lack of open spaces he would not want to trade Istanbul for any other place. For Heinz, interactions with Turkish people have been quite positive in general and he said that he is fully accepted by his Turkish friends and has not encountered any reservations based on his foreignness.

IKV intern and Istanbul Şehir University student Constance Döring referred to the difficulties related to Turkey’s EU accession but on a more positive note as she said that she thinks it is not only important but also viable for Turkey and the EU to deepen their already existing relations and modernise the EU-Turkey Customs Union. Döring said that she had chosen Turkey for her gap year after high school because she wanted to learn a new language.