Turkey’s brain drain rate among university graduates rose to 2.2 percent in 2025 from 2 percent a year earlier, with information technology and engineering graduates among the most likely to live abroad, according to official statistics released Friday.
Germany overtook the United States as the leading destination, accounting for 22 percent of graduates living abroad, compared with 16.9 percent in the United States, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported.
The figures track Turkish citizens who graduated from bachelor’s degree programs in Turkey within a defined period and are registered as living abroad. They do not represent the proportion of all university graduates who left Turkey during 2025.
TurkStat’s latest statistics showed that the rate was higher among men, at 2.7 percent, than women, at 1.8 percent.
Graduates in information and communication technologies recorded the highest rate among broad fields of study, at 7 percent. Engineering, manufacturing and construction followed at 4.8 percent, ahead of natural sciences, mathematics and statistics at 3 percent.
Among individual degree programs, molecular biology and genetics had the highest rate, at 13.1 percent, followed by management engineering at 13 percent, mathematical engineering at 11 percent, electronics engineering at 10.9 percent and physics engineering at 10.2 percent.
Scholarship graduates record higher rates
Graduates of private foundation universities had a brain drain rate of 4.4 percent, more than twice the 1.9 percent recorded among public university graduates.
The gap was particularly visible among graduates who had received full scholarships at foundation universities. Their rate reached 8.6 percent, compared with 3.8 percent among partial-scholarship graduates and 3.7 percent among those who paid full tuition.
French-language programs recorded the highest rate by language of instruction, at 10.5 percent, followed by German at 7.5 percent and English at 6.8 percent.
İstanbul had the highest rate among Turkey’s 81 provinces, at 4 percent, followed by İzmir, Ankara, Eskişehir and Yalova. The eastern province of Siirt recorded the lowest, at 0.2 percent.
Germany replaces US at the top
Germany’s emergence as the leading destination marked a shift from the 2024 statistics, when the United States ranked first at 19.6 percent, narrowly ahead of Germany at 19.4 percent.
The United Kingdom accounted for 10.5 percent of graduates living abroad in the latest figures, while Canada accounted for 5.2 percent.
Computer engineering graduates formed the largest group by degree program among those living in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Electrical and electronics engineering graduates accounted for the largest share in the United States, while business administration graduates were the largest group in Canada.
Political disillusionment and student protests
The figures come against a backdrop of economic hardship and political disillusionment among young Turks, many of whom have grown up knowing no national leader other than President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Young protesters have described frustration with his increasingly centralized rule and diminishing confidence in their ability to bring about democratic change.
Those frustrations erupted into nationwide demonstrations after İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a leading political rival of Erdoğan, was detained in March 2025 and subsequently jailed pending trial on corruption charges.
University students boycotted classes and organized marches, sit-ins and campus forums, protesting both his imprisonment and what they described as the erosion of democratic rights and academic freedom. Their grievances included government influence over universities, judicial interference and police violence.
Police detained nearly 2,000 people nationwide in the initial crackdown, including hundreds of university students. Families waited outside courthouses and prisons for news of their children as protesters faced prosecution over their participation in demonstrations.
Human Rights Watch later criticized the prosecution of hundreds of people, mainly students, in rushed mass trials, saying the cases lacked evidence of criminal wrongdoing and illustrated arbitrary restrictions on freedom of assembly.
Restrictions on academic freedom have also figured prominently in the debate over educated Turks leaving the country. After a failed coup in July 2016, the government dismissed thousands of academics by executive decree and imposed passport restrictions on many of those purged.
The trend extends to students leaving before university. Graduates of prestigious institutions such as İstanbul High School, Galatasaray High School and the German High School have chosen to study abroad, citing concerns about employment prospects, political repression and declining education standards.
TurkStat’s figures do not establish why individual graduates moved abroad, but economic pressures and restrictions on democratic freedoms form part of the wider debate over their prospects at home.
Doctors’ organizations have separately warned about physicians seeking careers overseas amid heavy workloads, low pay, violence against healthcare workers and deteriorating working conditions.
According to Turkish Medical Association figures, 2,669 doctors applied for documents needed to work abroad in 2024, followed by 2,400 in the first 11 months of 2025. Those applications indicate interest in overseas employment but do not establish how many applicants ultimately left Turkey.
The post Turkey’s graduate brain drain rises as Germany overtakes US as top destination appeared first on Turkish Minute.