Amasya University is a public university founded by a law that came into force on 17 March 2006; its name may be new, but behind it lies more than thirty years of higher education. In the Ottoman period the city was known as a centre of learning, where princes were trained and where madrasas and scholars flourished. The university's own account frequently recalls this older identity, and the institution sets itself the goal of being a home of teaching and research "worthy of the City of Princes". Its present form grew out of layers laid one upon another: two schools opened by the Ministry of Education in the 1970s, a quarter of a century under the roof of Ondokuz Mayıs University, and the faculties founded in quick succession after 2006. Tracing this history also shows that the dates in the official records do not always agree with one another.

The City's Older Tradition of Learning

The university's emphasis on Amasya as a "city of learning" finds strong support in the local historiography of the city's old educational order. In the first volume of Amasya Tarihi, Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar describes the neighbourhood schools and madrasas of the city almost as a system of school grades: even schools without an endowment were kept going by the city's aghas and beys, and at least a quarter of those who left the primary Qur'an schools went on to complete their studies in the madrasas of Amasya. In his view the schools and the dârülkurrâs (schools of Qur'an recitation) served as primary and secondary education, while the madrasas ranked as "mekâtib-i âliye", that is, institutions of higher learning. He groups the subjects taught into three bodies: the religious sciences such as Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence and theology; the rational sciences such as philosophy, logic, medicine, geometry and arithmetic; and the literary sciences such as rhetoric, lexicography, syntax, morphology, history and poetry. He adds that arithmetic, geometry and history received great care at first but later fell behind.

In the third volume of the same work, describing the city's golden age, Hüsameddin calls Amasya, with its great madrasas, professors, poets, physicians and calligraphers, "a magnificent dâru'l-irfân, a glorious dâru'l-fünûn". Dârülfünun was the Ottoman word used for a university; the author's choice of this comparison shows how the tradition to which today's university links itself was already perceived in the 1920s. There is, however, no institutional continuity between the madrasas and the present university; the link between them is the city's memory of its own past.

The first traces of teacher training in the modern sense go back to the beginning of the twentieth century. According to the life story of Osman Fevzi Olcay, after the Çukurkonak and Çevikçe schools Olcay completed the idadi (secondary school) at Saraydüzü, studied mathematics in Istanbul for a year, returned to Amasya and in 1327 (1912) enrolled at the Amasya Darülmuallimin (teachers' college), from which he received a certificate. That in Amasya Hâtıraları he refers to one of his teachers as "Ekrem Bey, one of the graduates of the Darü'l-Muallimin" also shows that the school was training teachers in the city. No document was found that establishes a direct link between this teachers' college and the education institute founded in 1974; the two may be seen as answers given in different eras, in the same city, to the same need for teachers.

Roots Reaching Back to 1974

The foundations of the university were laid thirty-two years before its establishment. In 1974 the Ministry of Education set up a higher education unit for teacher training in Amasya; in the university's official table of units it is recorded as the Faculty of Education, with the 1974-1975 academic year. The university's performance programme and earlier accounts refer to the same institution as the Education Institute. The following year, in 1975, the Amasya Vocational School opened and began teaching in the 1975-1976 academic year. These two institutions formed the first core of higher education in the city.

In 1981, with the founding of the Council of Higher Education (YÖK), higher education institutions were reorganised and the units in Amasya were attached to Ondokuz Mayıs University. The date of this transfer is given as 1981 in some accounts and as 1982 in the university's own performance programme. Ondokuz Mayıs University is based in Samsun and was founded on 1 April 1975; the universities of Sinop, Amasya and Ordu are counted among those later founded by separating from units within it. In the same period the education institute was replaced by a School of Education attached to the Faculty of Education of Ondokuz Mayıs University. Under Law No. 3836, adopted on 2 July 1992, this school was converted into the Amasya Faculty of Education from the 1992-1993 academic year; the city thus gained a faculty fourteen years before its university was founded.

In the years that followed, higher education also spread to the surrounding districts. On 1 November 1990 the YÖK Executive Board decided to establish the Merzifon Vocational School under Ondokuz Mayıs University; the school admitted students in the 1991-1992 academic year. The starting date of the health school, on the other hand, is given differently in the sources. The university's promotional texts associate the Amasya School of Health with the 1992-1993 academic year. According to the detailed history in the performance programme, however, the school first opened in the 1994-1995 academic year as the "Amasya Vocational School of Health Services" at associate degree level, was renamed the Amasya School of Health by a Council of Ministers decision dated 2 November 1996, and began offering a bachelor's programme in nursing from 1997-1998. Whichever date is taken, for more than thirty years before it had a university of its own, Amasya trained teachers, health workers and technicians as an extension of Ondokuz Mayıs University.

The Founding Law of 2006

Amasya University was founded by Law No. 5467 of 1 March 2006; this law, which provided for the creation of fifteen new universities, came into force on its publication in Official Gazette No. 26111 of 17 March 2006. The faculties and schools that had been operating in Amasya under Ondokuz Mayıs University were transferred to the new university. The same law also established the Faculty of Science and Letters, the Faculty of Architecture, the Faculty of Vocational and Technical Education, and the Institutes of Science and of Social Sciences. The university's own history describes this transition as follows: although young, the institution rests on the foundations of the Amasya Faculty of Education, the Amasya Vocational School, the Merzifon Vocational School and the Amasya School of Health, and has decades of experience in higher education.

In the first years after its founding the university taught through a limited number of units. In the 2011-2012 academic year it had five faculties (Education, Science and Letters, Architecture, Technology and Medicine), one school of health, five vocational schools in Amasya, Merzifon, Taşova, Suluova and Gümüşhacıköy, and two institutes; the medical faculty was not yet admitting students. The number of international agreements was limited at first; over time the university gave its students the chance to spend terms at home and abroad through the Erasmus, Mevlana and Farabi exchange programmes.

The university defines itself by the aim of becoming "the Flagship University of a Flagship City" and uses the slogan "Further Ahead, All Together". Its official promotional texts state that it is based on a learning-organisation model and a quality-oriented approach to governance, and that its programmes aim to raise individuals who research, question and take responsibility. These are the institution's own statements and do not amount to an external assessment. The languages of instruction are Turkish and English.

Emblem and Corporate Identity

The university's emblem was designed in 2012 by Prof. Dr. Ata Yakup Kaptan. According to the corporate identity guide, it contains three elements: the Yeşilırmak, which divides the city into two banks; the Tombs of the Pontic Kings on the heights above the city; and the Amasya Circular, in which the justification and method of the Turkish War of Independence were set out. At the centre stands one of these tombs carved into the limestone cliffs on the southern slopes of Mount Harşena; the guide notes that the outline of the tomb was drawn so as also to suggest the letter "A", the university's initial. The green areas represent the river, and the white lines on the grey ground represent the articles of the Amasya Circular.

The circular shape of the emblem was chosen as a reference to the continuity of knowledge and education, and the double ring enclosing its elements was conceived to express inclusiveness. The school colours are green, white and red; the guide interprets red as "a window opening onto life" and green as balance, harmony and growth. The guide also asks faculties and units to use the university's common emblem rather than logos of their own.

Mission, Vision and Values

The university's official mission statement sets the goal of educating qualified individuals who are competent in their fields, analytical, inquiring, enterprising and respectful of their values, and of serving the public good without compromising scientific standards. Its vision is to be an institution that is distinguished in teaching, recognised for its contribution to society, innovative in research and development and always preferred. Its core values include giving priority to quality, student-centredness, participation and innovation, social and environmental awareness, regard for national and cultural values, respect for art and artists, scientific productivity and academic freedom. A strategic plan has been published for the 2025-2029 period.

Faculties and Their Development

The university's present structure took shape gradually after 2006. The faculties of Science and Letters and of Architecture both carry 2006 as their founding year, but teaching began in the former in 2010-2011 and in the latter in 2012-2013. The history of the engineering faculty passes through several changes of name. The name of the Faculty of Vocational and Technical Education, opened under the founding law, was changed to the Faculty of Technology by a Council of Ministers decision of 2 November 2009; in older programme lists this faculty appears with departments of electrical and electronic, mechanical, computer, automotive and mechatronics engineering. The university's table of units gives the founding of the Faculty of Engineering as 2009 and its first intake as 2012-2013. By a Presidential decision of 20 May 2021 the Faculty of Technology was closed and a Faculty of Engineering and Architecture was established in its place.

The Faculty of Medicine was founded on 4 April 2011 by a Council of Ministers decision and took its first students in 2017-2018. The Faculty of Theology was founded by a Council of Ministers decision published in the Official Gazette of 23 June 2012 and began teaching in 2013-2014. The Merzifon Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences was founded by a Council of Ministers decision of 5 May 2014 and admitted students in 2018-2019. The School of Health was closed and converted into the Faculty of Health Sciences by a law published in the Official Gazette on 17 August 2017; the faculty gives 1992 as its origin. The nursing and midwifery programmes are run in this faculty.

Thus from 2021 onwards the university reached a structure of eight faculties, eight vocational schools, three institutes and one school. The teacher-training programmes of the Faculty of Education include primary school, preschool, mathematics, science, social studies, Turkish and English teaching, together with guidance and psychological counselling. The Faculty of Science and Letters covers basic fields such as history, Turkish language and literature, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and statistics. The Faculty of Architecture offers programmes in architecture, urban and regional planning, interior architecture, industrial design and landscape architecture. The programmes of the Faculty of Theology are listed as basic Islamic sciences, philosophy and religious studies, Islamic history and arts, and the teaching of religious culture and ethics. These programme names are based on older lists; the current names may have changed.

According to 2022 figures, the largest academic staff, in keeping with its old roots, was in the Faculty of Education, where 122 teaching staff were employed. It was followed by the faculties of Science and Letters with 72 and Medicine with 69. For graduate education, the Institutes of Science and of Social Sciences were founded in 2006, and both began teaching in 2011-2012. The Institute of Health Sciences was founded in 2017. The founding of the School of Foreign Languages is given as 2018 in the university's table of units, whereas the performance programme states that the school was founded by a Council of Ministers decision of 25 January 2016. The Institute of Health Sciences and the School of Foreign Languages became operational in 2018-2019.

The Faculty of Medicine and the Training and Research Hospital

Six years passed between the founding of the Faculty of Medicine and its first intake. During this time, under a joint-use protocol signed with the Ministry of Health, the faculty began to run the city's state hospital jointly as the Amasya University Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Training and Research Hospital. In April 2017 the then rector, Prof. Dr. Metin Orbay, announced that advanced operations had increased at the hospital in fields such as obstetrics and gynaecology, general surgery, cardiology, ear, nose and throat, and orthopaedics and traumatology, that patient referrals had fallen and that specialist medical training had begun.

In the same month YÖK approved the admission of thirty students to the faculty in the 2017-2018 academic year. Under the arrangement, until the physical infrastructure was complete, the students would take their basic medical courses at the Ondokuz Mayıs University Faculty of Medicine in Samsun and study in Amasya in their fourth, fifth and sixth years. For the faculty's morphology building, Amasya Municipality allocated the site of the city's old bus station; on this occasion Orbay noted how hard it was to find land in the city's narrow terrain and announced that the tender had been completed and the site handed over. The rector described the first intake as the revival of medical education in the footsteps of Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, "who centuries ago carried out important scientific work in Amasya". The dean of the faculty at the time was Prof. Dr. Üzeyir Gök. The university's 2022 performance programme also lists a Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Campus with 15,000 square metres of teaching space.

Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin and the Health Sciences

The university's health units were named in connection with Amasya's medical history. Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin was born in Amasya in 1386 and died in 1468. His grandfather Hacı İlyas Çelebi and his father Ali Çelebi had both served as chief physicians at the Amasya Bimarhane (hospital); Şerefeddin received his medical training in a master-apprentice relationship at the Amasya Darüşşifa, and is said to have begun practising at the age of seventeen. Three principal works by him are known. The first is the Akrabadin Tercümesi, in which, at the request of Prince Bayezid, he translated into Turkish the pharmacology section of Zeyneddin al-Jurjani's Zakhira-i Khwarazmshahi. The second is the Cerrahiyyetü'l-İlhaniyye, regarded as the first illustrated surgical book written in the Ottoman lands. The book consists of three parts and is furnished with the author's own drawings showing how operations were performed, the positions of patient and physician, and the use of surgical instruments. Some argue that the work is merely a translation of the surgical section of Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi's Kitab al-Tasrif; on the other hand, it is accepted that Sabuncuoğlu used this book as a source and added his own observations and experience. He wrote his third work, the Mücerrebnâme, in 1468 at the request of the physicians of Amasya; dealing with drugs in seventeen chapters according to the way they are prepared, this book is cited as the first Turkish work of experimental medicine.

The experiments described in the Mücerrebnâme show what sets the work apart. Sabuncuoğlu drank the antidote he had prepared against snakebite himself, then let a snake bite his finger and recorded that he saw no swelling or symptoms. In another experiment he had a poisonous snake bite a rooster whose leg feathers had been plucked, applied theriac to the greenish wound that appeared on the skin the next day, and observed that the symptom disappeared on the second day. It is also reported that when he could not cure a disease, he learned the methods of those knowledgeable in it. His writing the book in Turkish is notable in an age when Arabic and Latin were regarded as the languages of science; it is also stated that he wrote the Cerrahiyyetü'l-İlhaniyye in Turkish so that surgeons who could read only Turkish might benefit from it. His works were introduced to the scholarly world through an article published by Hakkı Uzel in 1920.

The university's vocational school of health services, founded on 10 May 2012, bears his name; its programmes consist of the departments of health care services, medical services and techniques, child care and youth services, and therapy and rehabilitation. In 2022 thirty-three teaching staff worked at the school. Students of this school and of the Faculty of Health Sciences carry out their practical courses and professional training in health institutions across the province under a cooperation protocol signed between the Amasya Provincial Health Directorate and the university. The protocol lists among the training sites the training and research hospital, the 112 emergency stations, community and family health centres, and home-care units.

Vocational Schools in the Districts

One of the university's distinguishing features is its spread across the districts of the province. The Taşova Yüksel Akın, Suluova and Gümüşhacıköy Hasan Duman vocational schools were founded by a letter of the Presidency of YÖK dated 29 December 2010; admissions began in Suluova and Gümüşhacıköy in 2011-2012 and in Taşova in 2013-2014. The Merzifon Vocational School runs programmes in fields such as office services, marketing, computer technology, electronics, construction, mechanical engineering and textiles; both an old and a new campus have been used in Merzifon. Suluova's programmes are in agriculture and food fields such as food technology, dairy products, seed production, medicinal and aromatic plants, and firefighting. Taşova offers horticulture, organic farming, greenhouse cultivation and plant protection. The Gümüşhacıköy Hasan Duman Vocational School runs both administrative and agricultural programmes such as public finance, banking and insurance, local government and field crops. The School of Design, founded by a decision of the YÖK General Assembly of 1 March 2013, taught from 2014-2015 onwards.

The Amasya Vocational School, the oldest school in the city centre, was divided in two by a YÖK decision of 12 July 2012, giving rise to the vocational schools of Social Sciences and of Technical Sciences. Both schools offer a broad range of programmes. The Vocational School of Social Sciences houses departments of hotel, restaurant and catering services, marketing and advertising, foreign trade, accounting and tax practice, office services and computer use. The Vocational School of Technical Sciences consists of technical departments such as computer technology, electricity and energy, electrical and automation, construction, architecture and urban planning, machinery and metal technology, motor vehicles, chemistry and textiles. These programmes, too, are taken from older lists and may have changed over time.

This distribution ensured that higher education was not concentrated in the provincial centre alone. The concentration of agriculture and food programmes in Suluova and Taşova, and of industry and textile programmes in Merzifon, is in keeping with the economic structure of the districts. The staff of the district schools, however, are small: in 2022 the Merzifon and Suluova vocational schools had thirty-two teaching staff each, Gümüşhacıköy twenty and Taşova seventeen, most of them lecturers.

Campuses

The university's campuses comprise the Milli Hakimiyet Campus, the Yeşilırmak Campus, the İpekköy Campus, the Faculty of Medicine Campus, the vocational school campuses of Gümüşhacıköy, Suluova and Taşova, and the old and new campuses of the Merzifon Vocational School. The schedule of property in the 2022 performance programme also shows the functions of these campuses. At the Milli Hakimiyet Campus it records administrative buildings, teaching space, meeting and conference halls, and more than 5,700 square metres of library space. The Yeşilırmak Campus is the one where classrooms, sports and social facilities take up the most room. At İpekköy there is a guesthouse alongside teaching, administrative and research space; the Central Research Laboratory also operates on this campus. In Merzifon, the Yakacık Campus is recorded alongside the vocational school campus.

In the same schedule the university's total enclosed floor area is recorded as 134,637 square metres at the beginning of 2022; of this, some 30,000 square metres are classrooms, 19,000 the rectorate and administrative units, and 8,700 conference halls and libraries. The buildings include a semi-Olympic indoor swimming pool, indoor sports halls and the mosque of the Faculty of Theology. No dormitory or staff housing space belonging to the university appears in the same schedule. Every student has an e-mail address created from the student number, and this address is used to connect to the eduroam service over the wireless network installed on the campuses. The list of student societies counts some twenty-eight clubs, including chess, theatre, music, folk dance, photography, mountaineering, culinary arts and mathematics; this list may not be up to date.

The Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar Library

The university's central library bears the name of Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, the author of the most comprehensive history of the city. Hüsameddin was born in November 1869 in the Çeribaşı quarter of Amasya; he began his education at the Balcı School in his neighbourhood and continued it until he completed the rüşdiye (middle school) in 1887. In these years he took lessons in Persian, studied the books in the Abdüllatif Efendi Library and began to collect his first information on the history of Amasya. In 1889 he went to Istanbul and completed his madrasa education; during his posts as judge and deputy judge he searched libraries, court registers and endowment deeds in Crete, Damascus, the Hejaz, Salonica, Bursa and many towns of Anatolia. He served as deputy judge in Vezirköprü, Osmancık, Niksar and Refahiye, and his last post was as translator of old records at the Ministry of Pious Foundations. He was a member of the Ottoman Historical Society from its founding and died in Istanbul on 10 February 1939.

Of Amasya Tarihi, planned in twelve volumes, only four could be printed, between 1912 and 1928. Of the manuscripts bought by Amasya Municipality in 1979, the fifth volume is lost, while volumes six to twelve are kept in manuscript on deposit at the Süleymaniye Library. Turgut Akpınar writes that the author's habit of mostly not citing his sources, and his excessive etymological comparisons, raised doubts about the scholarly value of the work, while Franz Babinger regarded the book as "a real treasure" on some subjects and recommended translating it into a Western language. On 16-18 May 2024 the university's Institute of Social Sciences, together with the Governorship and the Municipality of Amasya, organised the "International Amasya Social Sciences Research Symposium I" with Hüsameddin as its theme; some of the papers presented were published as a book among the university's publications in October 2024.

The central library, reorganised in both space and function, opened in 2020. It has a total enclosed area of 5,000 square metres and seating for 1,500, and its reading rooms are open twenty-four hours a day. The building has three reading rooms and a seminar room; the number of study rooms, however, is given differently in the sources: the university's introductory page speaks of two group study rooms and fifteen individual ones, while the 2022 performance programme speaks of fifteen group study rooms and two individual rooms. The physical layout of the libraries is said to have been designed with access for disabled users in mind; there is a separate study room and a reading machine for visually impaired students, and disabled citizens from outside the university can also use this service.

The library system consists of a central library, three branch libraries and four unit libraries. The library of the Yeşilırmak Campus has 480 square metres and 180 seats, that of the İpekköy Campus 258 square metres and 88 seats, and that of the Faculty of Theology 500 square metres and 100 seats. According to the records at the beginning of 2022, the collection held some 75,000 printed books, more than two million e-books accessed through subscriptions, 214 printed journals and more than 36,000 electronic journals.

Research Centres and the Technopark

From 2011 onwards various application and research centres were founded within the university. The Continuing Education and Distance Education centres were founded in 2011, the Central Application and Research Laboratory in 2012, the Preschool Education centre in 2013, the Social and Strategic Research centre in 2014 and the Turkish Teaching centre in 2018. The infrastructure of the Distance Education Centre proved decisive during the COVID-19 pandemic: from the autumn semester of 2020-2021 all associate, bachelor's and master's programmes were moved to distance learning. The Technology Transfer Office and the centres for Women's and Family Studies and for Guidance and Psychological Counselling also appear in the current list of units.

The founding decision of the Amasya Technology Development Zone was published in the Official Gazette in September 2025; on 13 September 2025 the Minister of Industry and Technology, Mehmet Fatih Kacır, announced that, together with the İstanbul Finance and Technology Hub and Alanya zones established by the same decisions, the number of technoparks in the country had reached 113. The rector's twentieth-anniversary message states that in the university's Technopark ideas meet technology and solutions based on cooperation with industry are produced.

Student and Staff Numbers

In the 2021-2022 academic year the number of enrolled students was 16,299: 8,532 associate degree, 6,482 bachelor's, 1,254 master's and 31 doctoral students. In 2022 the academic staff numbered 705; of these, 48 are recorded as professors, 94 as associate professors, 236 as assistant professors, 200 as lecturers and 127 as research assistants. The university's performance programme for the same academic year gives somewhat different figures: 17,149 students, and 681 academic staff, of whom 44 were professors, 74 associate professors, 221 assistant professors, 202 lecturers and 140 research assistants, together with 297 administrative staff and 243 permanent workers. The difference may be due to the dates on which the counts were made.

According to the twentieth-anniversary message published by Rector Prof. Dr. Ahmet Hakkı Turabi on 17 March 2026, the university has close to 60,000 graduates, more than 20,000 students, 740 academic and 620 administrative staff. The figures in the message are the institution's own statement; the difference from the 2021-2022 data reflects growth over roughly four years. The presence of students and staff in the provincial centre and the districts has brought new life to the city's trade and cultural life. The university's academic publications, research projects and public events have also made it a focal point of interest in the region.

The Twentieth Anniversary

On 17 March 2026 the university celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its founding. Rector Turabi's message says that the university has taken its steps in the light of Atatürk's republican principles, has increased its national and international presence through scientific projects, and has played a part in production and development in cooperation with the city. The message thanks all internal and external stakeholders who have contributed from the past to the present. At the end of twenty years the university stands at the point where a path begun in 1974 with a single education institute has become an institution spread across every district of the province.

Chronology

1912: Osman Fevzi Olcay enrolled at the Amasya Darülmuallimin; a school training teachers existed in the city.

1974: The Ministry of Education founded the Faculty of Education in Amasya (an education institute in some accounts).

1975: The Amasya Vocational School was founded; it began teaching in 1975-1976.

1981-1982: With the founding of YÖK, the units in Amasya were attached to Ondokuz Mayıs University; the School of Education was created.

1990-1992: The Merzifon Vocational School was founded (YÖK decision of 1 November 1990, teaching from 1991-1992); under Law No. 3836 the School of Education became the Amasya Faculty of Education.

1992-1997: The health school opened (1992-1993 or 1994-1995, depending on the source); in 1996 it was renamed the Amasya School of Health, and a bachelor's programme in nursing began in 1997-1998.

17 March 2006: Amasya University was founded by Law No. 5467.

2009: The Faculty of Vocational and Technical Education was renamed the Faculty of Technology.

2010-2014: The Taşova, Suluova and Gümüşhacıköy vocational schools (2010), the Faculty of Medicine (2011), the Faculty of Theology and the Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Vocational School of Health Services (2012), the School of Design (2013) and the Merzifon Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences (2014) were founded.

2012: The Amasya Vocational School was divided in two; the university's emblem was designed.

2017: The School of Health was converted into the Faculty of Health Sciences; the admission of thirty students to the Faculty of Medicine was approved, and the faculty took its first students in 2017-2018.

2018: The Turkish Teaching Centre was founded; the School of Foreign Languages (founded in 2016 according to some records) became operational.

2020: The Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar Central Library opened in its renovated form.

2021: The Faculty of Technology was closed and the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture was founded.

16-18 May 2024: The International Amasya Social Sciences Research Symposium I, themed on Hüsameddin, was held.

September 2025: The founding decision of the Amasya Technology Development Zone was published.

17 March 2026: The university celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its founding.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources