Cooperation with the Faculty of Law of Yıldırım Beyazıt University—one of the most well-known public higher education institutions in Turkey—began in 2021. In that year, Associate Professor Belkıs Vural Çelenk delivered a lecture at our faculty on the Turkish regulation of private international law. Later that same year, the faculty members of the two institutions had the opportunity to get acquainted with each other’s private law institutions at an online conference. This was followed by another online event and then two in-person conferences held in Budapest and Ankara.
Building on this background, and with great interest, our Faculty of Law hosted the fifth two-day conference on April 16–17, 2026. Ten Turkish and thirteen Hungarian speakers discussed, across nine panels, the legal issues arising in various fields of law due to climate change, as well as the international and national responses to these challenges. The conference, based on a comparative law methodology, revealed that the phenomenon under examination raises the same questions in both countries; however, the responses differ. In recent years, Turkish legislation has placed strong emphasis on environmental protection, sustainability, and the green transition—not only in public law but also across various areas of private law.
It is well known that Turkey is among the candidate countries for membership in the European Union, and therefore aligns its legal system with EU law. In addition to a shared history, this also provides a point of connection for Turkish and Hungarian legal scholars. Hungarian lawyers from an EU Member State can share their practical experiences with their Turkish colleagues, thereby helping them address the challenges of legal harmonization.
Following the conference—which maintained an excellent atmosphere throughout and included substantive remarks and proposals—cooperation between the two institutions will continue. Next year, the faculties will meet in Ankara, and several participants have already agreed to initiate joint research projects focusing on specific subfields, as well as to publish an edited volume of studies.
An agreement was reached between Prof. Dr. Zoltán J. Tóth, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, and Prof. Dr. Neslihan Karataş Durmuş, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, according to which the two universities will launch a joint program in the field of economic law in 2028.
