The Political Science Program at the Işık University was founded as part of the Department of International Relations in 2007. Political Science explores concepts such as power, authority and legitimacy; ideas such as equality, freedom, justice and democracy; and institutions such as the state, government and political parties. The courses of our Political Science Program are clustered around five basic fields. These are comparative politics, political theory, Turkish politics, public policy and intrenational relations. Students of this program enroll to the same courses with the International Relations program in the first two years of their study. Starting from their third year, they have the opportunity to specialize in the discipline by chosing courses such as gender and politics, human rights and political sociology. Like the all other programs at Işık University, in this program as well the number of departmental courses do not exceed half of the total number of courses. In this way, we aim to provide the students with a multidisciplinary approach.

The students of this program also have the opportunity to study abroad for a semester or a year using the opportunities provided by our exchange agreements with various universities in Europe. The academic members of the program consist of people who have completed their doctoral studies and /or pursued post-doctoral research at well-respected universities in Turkey and abroad. In addition, again thanks to our exchange agreements with various European universities, guest lecturers also contribute to our courses. Students of this program have the possibility of enrolling in a double-major program with departments of Economics and Business Administration. Graduates of the program have various job opportunities at the public and private sectors as well as civil society organizations, think-thanks and international organizations.

“Why am I so interested in politics? If I were to answer you very simply I would say this: Why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations in which it functions, and the system of power which defines regular forms and regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct? The essence of our life consists, after all, in the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.” Michel Foucault

“Man is by nature a political animal”. Aristotle