Geography Department

I'm Professor Yılmaz Arı. I am the Head of the Geography Department. I received undergraduate education at Atatürk University, Department of Geography Education. After graduating, I worked as a teacher at the Ministry of National Education for 2 years. After that, I enrolled in the department I graduated from as a research assistant. After a short study there, I went to the United States to complete my graduate education by passing the foreign education exam of the Council of Higher Education. After completing my master's degree and my doctorate education in the United States, I returned to Turkey in 2001. After working at Balıkesir University for about 18 years, I moved to Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University where I continue my studies as the head of the department. My academic studies mostly focus on cultural and political ecology, which is a new topic for Turkey. Human and environmental relations and the problems arising from them and the studies on their solution are also the focus of my work. In my academic studies, I also served as the Vice-President of the European Geographers Association, headquartered in Belgium, for three terms. I am also the founding president of the Balıkesir Centered Geography Association. We continue our work in both academia and civil society. Geography is basically a science that examines human and environmental relations from a spatial perspective. In fact, when we look at its sub-branches, we see that it has a very wide range of subjects. However, it is basically divided into two parts as Human Geography and Physical Geography. While we examine subjects such as geomorphology, climate, soil, and vegetation in Physical Geography; we deal with subjects such as industry, trade, tourism, settlements, and population in Human Geography. Therefore, all subjects related to these fall within the study field of geography. Of course, recently, especially with the development of technology, geographical information technologies have also developed in the same way and have significantly affected our practice of doing science. In this sense, the navigations, maps, and GPS used by everyone in geography have actually made our methods of making geography much easier. We have a sub-field called Geographical Information Systems. It is a newly developing field. Today, it is used as a base in all spatial planning. Therefore, we use these technologies to collect all spatial information about the problems, to store this information, to categorize and analyze this information, and to express the results in different visual ways. Apart from this, there is also a traditional side of geography that everyone knows. Geography gives us information about places. It shows other countries, regions, and cities. Therefore, through this sub-field, which we call regional geography, it also has the function of introducing us to the world at different scales, from global scale to continental scale, from country scale to regional scale. When we bring all these together, Geography is actually a science that can produce solutions for world problems and can offer us practical solutions to issues such as global warming, landslides, and other natural disasters that the world faces every day.
There are many places where the graduates of the Department of Geography can actually work. For instance, geographers have to be employed in many municipalities in Germany. Therefore, when a student goes there, employment opportunities are very wide. In Turkey, the field has expanded a bit in recent years, especially thanks to the geographic information systems technologies that I have just mentioned. Some of the students who graduated from the Department of Geography work as teachers in elementary education institutions in Turkey. Recently, students, who have learned about geographic information technologies, are employed in the spatial planning departments of municipalities. As long as they learn about information technology. This includes geographic information systems, remote sensing, and global positioning systems. When students learn these, they can find a job easily. Apart from this, they can be employed as staff in some public institutions. At the same time, they can work in private sector schools, preparatory courses, and in different educational institutions. But our main goal is to train students who have the competence to solve the problems arising from the relations between people and the environment, and we want Turkey to produce solutions to these problems. Therefore, our curriculum will be planned in this direction. I advise all students to choose the Department of Geography and attend Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University.