Riphah International University has signed agreements with three Turkish universities, Yildiz Technical University, Dokuz Eylul University, and Sabanci University, following bilateral engagements between the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan and the Council of Higher Education (CoHE) Turkiye held on September 13. The agreements were formalized during a high-level reception hosted by OIC-COMSTECH and APSUP at Islamabad Club on September 14, an event that brought together senior academic leadership from both Pakistan and Turkiye, with HEC Chairman Prof. Dr Niaz Ahmad Akhtar and Turkish Ambassador to Pakistan Dr Irfan Neziroglu both in attendance. The timing places the Riphah agreements within a broader wave of Pakistan-Turkiye higher education cooperation building around the same week’s bilateral discussions.
Yildiz Technical University, established in 1911, brings a longstanding legacy in engineering, science, and technology to the partnership, standing among Istanbul’s oldest public universities with 11 faculties and more than 30,000 students. Dokuz Eylul University, founded in 1982, is recognized for research excellence and multidisciplinary education, while Sabanci University, established in 1994, has built a reputation for innovation and interdisciplinary education despite being the youngest of the three institutions involved. Riphah was represented at the signing by Chancellor Hassan Muhammad Khan, Deputy Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr Yawar Hayat Khan, Head of International Office M Nauman Mansoor, and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Prof. Dr Abdulhamit Birisik, giving the university’s senior academic and international affairs leadership direct involvement in finalizing the agreements.
The three new partnerships extend a pattern of engagement Riphah has already built with other Turkish institutions in recent years, including an earlier collaboration with Istanbul Medipol University focused on student exchange and academic collaboration across departments and affiliated hospitals, as well as work between Riphah’s Faculty of Rehabilitation and Allied Health Sciences and multiple Turkish universities including Biruni University and Galata University. These agreements are described as extending beyond academic exchange to create new avenues for joint research, faculty and student mobility, knowledge sharing, and cross-border innovation, a scope that mirrors the structure of Riphah’s previous Turkish partnerships focused on research collaboration and exchange programmes rather than purely symbolic institutional ties.
Riphah, chartered by the federal government in 2002 and now operating across multiple campuses serving over 27,000 enrolled students, has positioned itself among Pakistan’s leading private sector universities, having previously been ranked among the top four institutions in the country by Times Higher Education and among the top 200 universities in Asia. The university’s continued push to build agreements with Turkish institutions specifically reflects a broader trend among Pakistani universities strengthening academic ties with Turkiye following the deepening of bilateral relations between the two countries across multiple sectors in recent years. Whether these three new agreements translate into active student and faculty exchange programmes, joint research output, or dual degree offerings will likely depend on how quickly both sides move from the signing stage into implementing specific collaborative activities across the partner institutions.
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