5 Ways to Work While Studying in Turkey
Turkey is a marvelous place to live in and being one of the top tourist destinations in the world provides a lot of work opportunities for the International Students who are studying in Turkey. Turkish language is usually important to while looking for a job opportunity. The good news is that it is a simple language to learn and has borrowed words from many languages commonly spoken such as Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, French, German and English. For students studying bachelors, masters or Phd in Turkey, it is quite a decent time to pick up the language and communicate with the locals. It is easily possible to learn the language enough to communicate with locals in 4-5 months. Though learning Turkish language is important, you can also find certain types of jobs which do not necessarily require you to know Turkish.
The huge diversity of nationalities that come here proves Turkey being multicultural hub for workers and being in such an amazing location on the globe it creates a lot of trade and business opportunities between Europe and Asian continents. This creates opportunities for international students to work in a host of multiple sectors.
A question that can arise here of what jobs can foreigners do in Turkey?
We can answer in a way that is easier to list the jobs that foreigners cannot do. These jobs include dentistry, pharmaceutical, veterinarian, lawyers, notary, security, customs and specific occupations within the maritime industry that are covered by the Cabotage Law.
5 Popular areas of jobs for International Students while studying in Turkey
- Tourism and Hotel Industry
Turkey as being one of the best tourist attractive country have a lot of Hotels and Resorts to entertain tourists and manage international events like destination wedding, summer vacation trips etc. The tourism and hotel industry bring in more than $ 40 Billion USD annually accounting for around 10-12% of the country’s GDP and is growing at a CAGR of 10% every year due to its preferred geography and natural beauty. More than 45.1 million tourists visited Turkey in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and the expected tourist numbers are set to increase to 60 million by 2023. Istanbul, Turkey is home to the most expensive and biggest airport in the world with a cost of over $25 Billion USD.
This is a huge sector for international students who have language skills and the ones who graduate in these departments, they can earn handsome salary, go on official trips and make a tremendous career in this industry. Departments like Gastronomy, Tourism, Culinary, Business Administration, Food Engineering etc. are one of the options that can be done to excel in this field.
- Teaching foreign Language (English, German, French, Arabic)
The best way to join the teaching industry is to gain a TEOFL, TESOL, CELTA or PGCE qualification and teach English as a second language. Turkish people are not very good in English which creates a huge gap for international people to fill in. After graduation or in summer holidays you can start doing part time work in schools or give private tuition to Turkish students as there is great demand for English Language teaching here. International students can charge upto 15-20$/hour of such teaching jobs.
- Teaching Assistant/Research Based Work
There are tremendous opportunities in public and private universities where Professors accommodate students for research projects plus foundation universities recruit Master’s and PhD level students on full scholarship schemes that require international students to assist the professors on certain tasks like project research, subject assistance, preparing statistics etc. Students can excel in this field and get chances to get full time employment at the campus post-graduation.
- Work in Consulates and Non-Governmental Organizations
Some professional and highly paid jobs are in various Embassies, Consulates etc. for international students in Turkey while having good grip in Turkish language as well. There are good chances for students who graduate in Political Science and International Relations departments while having the background of the field to get in foreign embassies to start their careers. Getting job in your own country’s embassy is more beneficial and easier while having the national language advantage.
Non-Government organizations are many and highly competitive in Turkey. As we know the market and studies in Turkey that show the illegal traffic and refugee movement in the country, that creates huge investment to tackle the situation regarding Education, Emergency and Relief projects, having NGO’s like AÇEV, ASO, Educational Volunteers, Human Rights Association, ISO, TEMA, TEPAV, TESEV, TOBB, Turkish Democracy Foundation, TUSIAD etc.
- IT Sector
Turkey is currently undergoing an exponential growth in the IT sector that is set to grow with CAGR of 20% YoY. The areas with most growth potential within this domain can be seen in Cybersecurity, Banking and Fintech Startups, Edtech Startups, Logistics, Hotel Management software, Cloud computing, Blockchain, AI and Machine learning. Students with a good knowledge and high interest in computer engineering or software engineering can get opportunities for paid internships in rising startups that offer great incentives and also flexible working hours. This is ideal for international students that are keen to learn programming languages as it allows them to also get paid while working from home and take up freelance projects.
Turkey highly values the importance of IT and the Turkish Government has set up incubators, accelerator techno parks called as “Teknopark” in multiple cities. The biggest Teknopark is in Istanbul which hosts more than 2000+ startups from 40+ countries. These Teknoparks allow students to pitch their startup idea to an expert jury and get cheap company setup costs, free mentorship from industry experts and businessmen, 18% VAT exemption, investment opportunities from Venture Capitalists, highly subsidized rental fees starting from 20$ per month and high tech labs to utilize amongst other facilities. In 2019, according to DailySabah, Turkish Teknoparks total annual revenue reached $14.37 Billion USD and additional $4.5 Billion USD worth of export volume of IT products and services.