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Glasgow University offers 6 scholarships to students from Turkiye, Syria

April 18, 2023 at 11:03 am

University of Glasgow, Scotland [De Simone Lorenzo/AGF/Universal Images Group via Getty Images]

The University of Glasgow is offering six exclusive tuition fee waivers to students from Turkiye and Syria following the earthquakes that devastated both countries.

On its website the university said it was offering the scholarships to students “who are facing challenges in progressing on to Higher Education.”

On 6 February 7.6 and 7.8 magnitude earthquakes hit northwest Syria and southeast Turkiye, destroying buildings, bridges and reducing homes to rubble.

Thousands of apartment blocks, schools and hospitals have either been destroyed or are too dangerous to enter.

The death toll has exceeded 55,000 and the quake has impacted close to 18 million people.

Even before the earthquake, life was tough for students in Syria and Turkiye.  In Syria, universities are politicised and militarised, with students forcibly disappeared and murdered.

Hundreds of academics have been persecuted and lost their jobs amid a war that has now lasted for over a decade.

READ: Doubts surround death of Syria refugee in Polish detention centre

In northwest Syria, students and higher education employees were among the people who died in the devastating earthquakes.

More than 500,000 civilians have been killed during the Syrian conflict; 13 million have been displaced and 6.7 million forced to flee the country.

In Turkiye, the government has carried out mass firing of academics without due process.

In 2018 the advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the Turkish government’s dismissal and prosecution of thousands of academics was leading to self-censorship.

In 2021 academic Mustafa Ozben was arrested, tortured by electric shock, beaten and his wife and children threatened.

At the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, Glasgow University offered four fee waivers for refugee students who had settled in the UK.

That same year, the university offered a place to two Syrian PhD students who fled their homeland from the Syrian regime and the terror group Daesh.

In 2015 the influx of refugees into Europe hit staggering numbers – 75 per cent of all refugees were from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq.