A five member delegation of the Pak-Turk Maarif International visited the University of Karachi on Wednesday to discuss the possibilities of collaboration in the education sector to further strengthen the bilateral relationships between Turkey and Pakistan.

The delegation was led by Harun Kucukaladagli, who is the regional coordinator for the Asia Pacific of the Pak-Turk Maarif, which is an international chain of schools and colleges, based in Turkey.

The visitors expressed that the schools and colleges chain wants to establish a campus of Pak-Turk Maarif in the University of Karachi where they would offer quality education till intermediate level as well as like to launch vocational training programmes for the youngsters so that they could learn about modern needs and technologies.

They added that the students after completing their studies at the Pak-Turk Maarif would be able to avail the scholarships and study at top universities located in Turkey and on the behalf of the Turkish government; Pak-Turk Maarif is responsible to arrange funds for these scholarships.

Harun Kucukaladagli informed the KU Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Khalid Mahmood Iraqi that Pak-Turk Maarif was established in 2016 as the act of the parliament and promoting education in more than 40 countries around the globe.

"Pak-Turk Maarif has 350 schools in the world while 13,000 children are studying in 27 campuses of 10 cities in Pakistan whereas there are 1,200 students in three campuses in Karachi."

The KU VC Professor Dr Khalid Iraqi shared that he would discuss the proposal with the members of Syndicate in next meeting and asked the Pak-Turk Maarif delegation to submit the relevant documents so that the proposal could be discussed in detail in the meeting.

He said that KU would like to extend its cooperation so that students could get benefits at the grassroots level. He also offered Pak-Turk Maarif to launch a Turkish language course in the campus and said that KU would launch the course in next semester if Pak-Turk Maarif arranges linguistic experts at the earliest.