The undergraduate program is comprised of a broad set of integrated courses designed to provide the training and perspective necessary for future career responsibilities in the field of International Relations (IR). These courses emphasize increased competence in IR specialties such as International Law, Diplomatic History, Politics of International Economy, Foreign Policy Analysis, Global Issues and Area Studies. The teaching objectives are to maintain the crucial balance between theory and practice and to ensure that every student is exposed to the latest understanding of all the key IR issues and to the conceptual and analytical frameworks underlying them.
The core set of courses provides the fundamentals of the field of IR while a wide variety of elective courses, to be taken from the department as well as from the Departments of Political Science, Economics, Psychology, Management and Philosophy, permits students to develop a program that will meet personal needs and special career interests.
For students who choose to pursue a more advanced degree in the field after completing an undergraduate degree, the Department of International Relations offers two Master’s degree programs and a doctoral degree program with considerable flexibility for graduate students to develop specialized academic programs to suit their needs and interests.
Students from other departments who wish to take IR courses as electives are recommended to complete certain compulsory IR courses before enrolling in upper level IR courses. While electives lack pre-requisites, most upper-level IR courses assume that students possess the basic theoretical background knowledge provided by the World Politics and International Relations Theory courses.
For more information about the undergraduate program, please contact ir@bilkent.edu.tr.
For more information about the University orientation program, click here.