Ahmed Çağrı İnan from Malaysia

Hello everyone from Malaysia, the homeland of Harimau (Malayan Tiger), with this first post! In addition to being a symbol of courage and strength for Malaysians, Harimau is constantly visible in Malaysian daily life through various emblems. For example, you can see Harimau in the symbol of Proton, Malaysia’s first national automobile company, in the logo of Maybank, one of Malaysia’s important corporate banks, and in the coat of arms of the Royal Malaysian Police. In a way, this post includes the postgraduate education part of the personal history of Ahmed Çağrı Inan, a PhD student who tried to understand Malaysia first and then explain what he understood from his perspective. The underlying reason for defining my writing is that I am a history student and I need to consider the length of my post so that reading becomes an equally enjoyable activity for the reader. For this reason, I designed the post as two separate sections that complement each other. The first part includes the period from the end of my undergraduate education to the beginning of my postgraduate education in Malaysia (2014-2016). The second part consists of the period from my postgraduate education to the present (2016-2021) and will be posted later. Therefore, in this post I make a general assessment of Malaysia on my own graduate education life and provide a preliminary idea or experience sharing for friends who are considering postgraduate education in Malaysia. 

In November 2014, I applied to the Ministry of National Education’s graduate education program abroad (YLSY) to realize my dream of studying abroad. First, I chose the Area Studies program to research the history of a different country. The idea of studying past events of people in geographic areas not familiar to me was fascinating for me. After successfully passing the interview, it was time to choose the country among about 40 different countries worldwide. I had set some criteria in my mind for the countries where I could get an education. The first idea was to choose among the Balkan, Middle Eastern and Caucasian countries, about which I had limited knowledge through my undergraduate courses. But then I realized that we have quality academics studying these countries. For this reason, I decided to choose a country less studied in the Turkish academia. As a result, I turned my direction towards Asia, and more specifically, Southeast Asia. Among the eleven Southeast Asian countries I had the right to choose were Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. I instinctively felt closer to Malaysia. But, in addition to this, there was an important question I had to ask myself; “if I was going to choose Malaysia, what criteria should I consider?” I thought about two crucial criteria : the quality of liveability and education in Malaysia. I believed that experience sharing is crucial for me as well as my individual research. For this reason, I had the opportunity to reach the academics İsmail Hakkı Göksoy and İsmail Yalçın, who wrote about Malaysia and went to the region for fieldwork. They helped me to determine five of Malaysia’s liveability criteria. The first important point for me was the safest city rank of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It was satisfactory that Kuala Lumpur has always been in the top three in the safe city category among Southeast Asian countries in recent years. Secondly, the economic situation of the country was important for living with the scholarship. The stable condition of the Malaysian local currency against the US dollar and the low course of inflation (the annual inflation rate of Malaysia has been between 1-2% for the last four years) was a positive economic indicator for me. The third critical factor was Malaysia’s geographic location. Some geographic features (such as Malaysia has both land and sea connection with other Southeast Asian countries and Malaysia has a position that can be considered in the geographical centre of Southeast Asian countries) would facilitate my cultural trips to other Southeast Asian countries. Fourthly, for a person like me, who is not very good with the winter season, the air temperature varying annually between 27-32 degrees and the monsoon rains falling in a specific period was literally incredible. Finally, the tourist visa agreement between Malaysia and Turkey was important: when my family and loved ones want to visit me, they can easily enter Malaysia with a three-month tourist visa. These factors were more or less to same for Singapore and Indonesia. However, the country where I caught the best average of these five factors was Malaysia. 

Focusing on education quality, it was a remarkable criterion for me that Malaysia has universities at the top of the world university rankings, as well as to have a well-known university in Turkey like the International Islamic University Malaysia. Moreover, most Malaysian universities are based in Kuala Lumpur, contributing to its intellectual atmosphere that I could easily breathe during my staying. Thus, ultimately, my destination was clear now, Malaysia!

In 2014, I was a scholarship holder of the Ministry of National Education’s YLSY Program. My first goal was to learn English, the international academic language, at a sufficient level. At that time, the language course opportunity in the YLSY program was provided in two stages, domestic and abroad. First, I completed the domestic language course, in eight months, at Hacettepe University’s School of Foreign Languages. Then, I finished the abroad part of my language education at the International House of London language school in the United Kingdom. It was an advantage for me to study language in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe, such as London, before moving to another cosmopolitan city like Kuala Lumpur. After achieving sufficient language scores in 2016, I needed to get acceptance for a master’s degree from a university in Malaysia and I got it from the history department of International Islamic University Malaysia. And this ends the period between 2014-2016, the first part of my post. As I write these lines, I feel the excitement of sharing the second part, the period between 2016-2021, with you in my next post. I wish you to stay healthy and happy in these epidemic days...