The Regional Development-Oriented Mission Differentiation and Specialization Programme is coordinated by the Council of Higher Education and carried out in coordination with the Presidency’s Strategy and Budget Office. The programme aims for universities to focus on the economic and social priorities of their region and to gain national-scale competence in that field.

Our University was declared the pilot university for hazelnut under this programme. Hazelnut is a strategic product at the centre of Giresun province’s economy, and one in which Türkiye leads world production. This field, where our University’s academic expertise meets the province’s production reality, forms the natural ground for specialization.

The Coordination Office operates within the framework of the Directive on the Hazelnut Specialization Coordination Office and on the Preparation, Evaluation and Monitoring of Specialization Projects adopted by Senate decision No. 255-1 of 13 June 2024. Prepared on the basis of Article 13(1)(b) and Article 14 of Higher Education Law No. 2547, the directive defines four bodies.

The composition of the Advisory Board shows that specialization is not merely an academic decision but is carried out together with the region’s production and governance actors.

The Coordination Board held its first meeting on 19 June 2023 and has met ten times to date. Before the board was founded, ten stakeholder meetings were held in 2021–2022 under the title “Developing and Promoting the Hazelnut Specialization Process”. The meeting reports of both series are publicly available.

All meeting reports are published on the website of the Hazelnut Specialization Coordination Office.

The priority areas, updated by Coordination Board decision No. 2024/02, consist of five headings to which hazelnut-related project applications at our University are directed.

Specialization occupies a steadily expanding place in our Institutional Internal Evaluation Reports. While the 2021 report records inclusion in the programme as an event, the following years trace the stages of building structures, generating activity and finally settling into institutional identity and the strategic plan.

Project application processes, application and report forms, board member lists, current announcements and detailed unit information are available on the Hazelnut Specialization Coordination Office’s own website.