The TV broadcast which included the comments of one of our daughter about her wish to continue her education in Germany and to be a German citizen has made a shock impact on those who see themselves responsible for this. After this broadcast, we had to recall the long-held issues related to brain drain. And some of them did not even feel the need to discuss the essence of the subject by discussing the school which our daughter has had education. On the same day that our daughter started the discussion and used these expressions, that is an important file related to brain drain was published on the independentturkish.com news website which was made by the journalist Nevzat Cicek on April 3rd. The title of the file prepared by Bengu Babaeker Sap was “the brain drain as a survival issue… Why Turkey loses its mind?”. With the expressions of ‘departures and those who are trying to go’, I have to say that it is a file that gives important hints about the topic. I would also like to share some important findings, research and statics from this study in this article.
According to the latest data, more than 50 thousand young people of which 24,000 in Germany and 15 thousand in the US are studying abroad or under graduate degree. The majority of them are the young people who say “I’m not going back” so cause us to talk about “brain drain”.
According to TurkSat data, 113 thousand 326 people have left our country in 2017 and their rates have increased by 63 percent in a year. In this static, two of every five people were in the 20-34 age range. The rate of women increased from 37 percent to 42 percent. In the file, it is shared that the increasing the rate of those who leave the country, the period after July 15 and FETO have share but it is not enough to explain this increase is explained in detail. Those who express opinion claim that reason cause them to leave the country is “political climate” and “the pschologhy of being afraid to speak”. For example a person who does not especially want to give his/her name and an overseas education consultant in Canada has shared interesting things. Canada gives a thousand 500 student visas every year and about 100 of them don’t want to go back. Howver, in recent years this number has increased to one-third to 500. Canada, therefore, began to consider the applications more rigorously. Meanwhile, Turkey is the 11th country which sends so many students.
Together with us, as India and China are in the forefront of the countries that give brain drain, developed states such as US, Germany and the United Kingdom have come to the fore as the most migrant countries. In the file again there is a term called intellectual desertification which indicates that poverty rates increase in countries that give brain drain. There is a statement that could be said that it is from the middle of the book of Prof.Dr.Hasan Gurak which is being quoted. Mr.Hasan says that “brain drain from developing states is the largest resource transfer to the developed states, and for this very valuable resource, developed states do not pay a price to developing countries”. Also a study conducted by British Council in 4,816 university students between the ages of 22 and 25 in 81 provinces is mentioned. According to this research, 95 of every 100 want to countinue their education abroad. According to another information in the file, 100 engineers from ASELSAN, SAGEM and TAI recently chose tol ive in Netherlands. According to the data of the Dutch Immigration and Citizenship Agency (IND) in 2018, 1020 academicians and highly educated people applied to the Netherlands for brain drain.
I wasn’t aware that the problem was so boring. It is obvious that the main responsible for his problem is the political institution. Only the election-oriented management approach does not look to long-term plans. They are acting according to the calculation of which business, no matter which investment is made, the voters can see immediately and so it can turn into vote. However, the response of the invesment made for a human being fort he license and post period could be taken averagely in 10 years. That is why it is not possible for countries that do not show this patience and are not able to look at the countries with confidence tomorrow, as they do not turn this into a road map as an important criterion in the country’s development strategy. In the meantime, let’s note; our young people go to developed countries of course. They benefit from the knowledge and experience of them but if we do not ask ourselves the question of why the departures are not coming back and do not take measures as soon as possible, our young people that are the most important resource of us continue to disappear quickly and we will just look at it.