In 1845, the mother of an Ottoman sultan endowed a hospital for the sick who had nowhere else to go. That hospital never closed. Today it anchors Bezmialem Vakıf University, a foundation university in Istanbul's Fatih district built almost entirely around medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and the health sciences. A ranking table or a tuition figure tells you where the university stands this year; the story behind it tells you why the name still carries weight.
Skip to: From an Ottoman Hospital to a Modern University
From an Ottoman Hospital to a Modern University
Bezmiâlem Valide Sultan, wife of Sultan Mahmud II and mother of Sultan Abdülmecid, founded a charitable endowment in 1845 to build a hospital for poor and destitute patients in Istanbul: Gureba Hastanesi. Public health in Ottoman society ran largely through this vakıf system, and Gureba became one of its most durable examples, continuing to operate under the same name well into the Republican era.
In 2010, Turkey's General Directorate of Foundations (T.C. Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü) established a university on behalf of three state-administered foundations — Bezmiâlem Valide Sultan, Silahtar Abdullah Ağa, and Abdülhamit Sani — and folded the historic hospital into it as a modern university hospital. The university's name comes directly from its founder. Depending on the program, instruction runs in Turkish or in English.
A Foundation University With an Unusual Owner
Most of Turkey's foundation universities trace back to private holding companies or individual family foundations. Bezmialem sits apart from that pattern: it answers to the state's own foundation administration, and it runs on a declared non-profit basis. The university leans on this distinction in its own materials, framing its education and healthcare as delivered without a commercial motive behind them. Whether or not that claim fully separates it from tuition-charging peers, the governance structure itself is genuinely uncommon among Turkish foundation universities.
Campuses and Faculties
The main campus sits in Fatih, at Topkapı Mahallesi, Adnan Menderes Vatan Bulvarı No:113, where the Faculties of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy hold their classes. The Faculty of Health Sciences, the Vocational School of Health Services, and the English preparatory department operate from a second campus in Eyüpsultan.
According to the university's 2022 Internal Evaluation Report submitted to the Higher Education Quality Council (YÖKAK), Bezmialem runs 4 faculties, 1 vocational school, and 4 institutes, offering 9 bachelor's programs, 14 associate-degree programs, and 19 graduate programs. Among the vocational school's most sought-after tracks are Nutrition and Dietetics, Audiology, Anesthesia, First and Emergency Aid, and Pathology Laboratory Techniques. The catalog looks broad on paper. In practice, the university barely steps outside health sciences at all.
Faculty Size and Student Profile
Bezmialem's own figures put its academic staff at close to 700. That pushes the faculty-to-student ratio to roughly one instructor for every five students. As of 2022, total enrollment stood at 3,486 — noticeably lower than most of Istanbul's larger foundation universities.
Small scale has not hurt the university's standing. In the URAP (University Ranking by Academic Performance) Turkey ranking for 2024–2025, produced by METU's Informatics Institute, Bezmialem placed 25th among all Turkish universities, 3rd among universities founded after 2000, and 4th among foundation universities overall. A modest headcount, paired with a ranking most larger schools would envy.
2025 Admission Scores and National Rankings
Turkish students enter Bezmialem primarily through YKS, the national university entrance exam, which assigns each applicant both a raw score and a national success rank per program. In the 2025 YKS placement results, Medicine posted the university's highest baseline score, 512.64758, filling its quota down to national rank 6,232. At the other end, the associate-degree Operating Room Services program recorded the lowest baseline score, 189.26445, accepting students down to rank 2,273,671.
Set against 2024, when the range ran from rank 6,545 to rank 2,603,431, the band has shifted noticeably wider. Not every program moved the same direction, though: the Medical Documentation and Secretarial program's cutoff rank actually tightened, from 392,060 in 2024 to 382,882 in 2025, meaning competition for those seats rose slightly. Quotas across programs run anywhere from 2 to 110 seats, and it is exactly those small quotas that make year-to-year swings so pronounced. International applicants apply through a separate admissions track rather than YKS, and should confirm current requirements directly with the university's international office.
Tuition Fees and Scholarships
For the 2025–2026 academic year, Bezmialem published annual tuition of 1,442,306 TL for Dentistry after a 25% discount, 1,084,248 TL for Medicine (Turkish and English programs alike) after a 50% discount, and 703,703 TL for Pharmacy after a 50% discount. A comparative table of foundation universities lists Bezmialem's full, undiscounted Medicine fee at 2,168,496 TL — against 3,300,000 TL at Acıbadem Mehmet Ali Aydınlar University, 3,249,000 TL at Koç University, and 2,300,000 TL at Yeditepe University. On that comparison, Bezmialem sits in the lower-middle band of foundation medical school fees, not the cheapest option but far from the most expensive.
Scholarship coverage ranges from 25% to 100% depending on the program, and academic merit scholarships are announced separately each year; the 2025 results, broken down by class year, were published on the university's official announcements page.
The Teaching Hospital and Clinical Training
The hospital that opened in 1845 is now a fully equipped university hospital, and it remains one of the university's clearest advantages. Within it, the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Application Center — established by ministerial approval dated October 16, 2015 — offers practices including acupuncture, phytotherapy, and cupping. The institution operates two hospitals in total, which widens the clinical training capacity available to students well beyond what a single teaching hospital could offer.
Internationally, a 2015 agreement with Johns Hopkins University stands out. Under this strategic collaboration, the medical curriculum is shaped jointly with Johns Hopkins faculty through a dedicated Scientific Committee. The partnership gives medical students access to a research-training curriculum that many medical schools simply do not offer, and some students complete clinical rotations directly at Johns Hopkins.
Campus Life: Housing, Transit, and Location
The Fatih campus sits on Vatan Boulevard, within walking distance of Istanbul's historic peninsula. There is no dormitory on campus. Students who need housing turn to the private student dormitories clustered around Fatih, and the campus's proximity to public transit keeps daily commuting manageable despite the absence of on-site housing.
The Eyüpsultan campus sits on an entirely different transit line, which means Health Sciences and vocational school students settle into a daily routine separate from their peers on the main campus. Student clubs lean heavily scientific and professional, which is the natural outcome of a university built almost entirely around health disciplines rather than a broad mix of faculties.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Bezmialem Vakıf University a public university?
No. It is a foundation university, established directly under Turkey's General Directorate of Foundations rather than a private holding company, and it operates on a declared non-profit basis.
Does Bezmialem Vakıf University have student dormitories?
There is no dormitory on the Fatih campus itself. Students rely on private student housing in the surrounding neighborhood, close to public transit.
What score does the Faculty of Medicine require?
In the 2025 YKS placement results, the baseline score for Medicine was 512.64758, filling down to national rank 6,232. This figure shifts each year with scholarship distribution, so check the current placement table directly.
Which district is Bezmialem Vakıf University located in?
The main campus sits on Vatan Boulevard in Istanbul's Fatih district. The Faculty of Health Sciences and the vocational school operate from a separate campus in Eyüpsultan.
How far back does the university's history go?
Its roots reach back to 1845, when Bezmiâlem Valide Sultan endowed the Gureba Hospital for Istanbul's poor. The university itself was established in 2010, absorbing that hospital's legacy.
Before You Add It to Your List
Rankings and tuition tables answer the question of what Bezmialem costs and where it stands this year; they don't answer what it feels like to train in a hospital with a 180-year clinical history, or to follow a curriculum co-built with Johns Hopkins Medicine faculty. That combination is rare enough among Turkish foundation universities to be worth the extra research. Confirm the current-year placement scores and fee schedule on Bezmialem's own site before you commit anything to paper.