Eastern University Preference: Atatürk University

Before going to some places, you feel as if you already know a great deal about them. I felt the same way.

The East… for me had always been distant, cold, a place you would go only if absolutely necessary.

When choosing a university, the only thought in my mind was:

“I wish there were a place in the West…”

But there wasn’t.

And so I found myself on the path to Atatürk University.

I will never forget the day I first arrived in Erzurum. The weather was truly cold—not the kind you see in movies, but a cold that seeps into your bones. Yet what surprised me most was not the weather, but the people.

Instead of the distant, reserved attitudes I expected, I encountered the genuine warmth of strangers.

Someone not just giving me directions, but walking me there,

another asking, “Are you cold?” out of genuine concern…

In that moment, I realized:

I had not come to a place—I had come carrying a prejudice.

Atatürk Üniversitesi, when I first stepped onto its grounds, I still felt that lingering “what if?”

But as I saw more of the campus, that feeling gradually gave way to astonishment.

This was not the small, limited place I had imagined. On the contrary, it felt like a world unto itself.

Paths that seemed endless as you walked,

trees that fell silent under snow, moments when even in a crowd you found your own quiet space…

Sometimes what a person needs most is precisely this:

A little slowing down.

My biggest question mark was here:

“Will it be enough?”

But as time passed, I realized something:

The problem was not the place.

The problem was my perspective.

Atatürk Üniversitesi taught me this:

If you truly want to learn,

there is no east or west to it.

The classes were rigorous, the professors well-equipped, and the expectations high.

It was a system you could not escape—you had to face it head-on.

Perhaps the heaviest yet most valuable thing this experience gave me was this:

I had been making decisions based on ideas that were not mine.

“There is no life in the East.”

“Studying there is hard.”

“Development exists only in the West.”

None of these were my own experiences.

They were only what I had heard.

But as I lived here, I came to understand:

Every place is its own world.

And some worlds cannot be seen from afar.

Atatürk Üniversitesi was not just a university to me.

It became a turning point.

The place where my prejudices shattered,

my perspective changed,

and perhaps for the first time, I truly thought.

I can say this clearly:

Some places do not tell you who they are.

You will never understand them

until you go and live there.

If I had never come here,

I would have continued believing so many things wrongly. I would never have felt the beauty of the good things I experienced here, nor would I have tasted the hardships and challenges I faced—and grown stronger because of them. Thank you, Erzurum…

Thank you, Atatürk Üniversitesi…