Open Access to Theses and Dissertations in Turkey has been Enacted by the Parliament

This has been an extremely important improvement for the open access in Turkey. The Council of Higher Education (YÖK) National Theses Center and Turkey OpenAIRE NOAD  had worked hard to make compulsory open access to theses and dissertations. As a result of these efforts, the Art. 10 of Law numbered 7100 has been entered into force upon publication of the Official Gazette numbered 30352 and dated March 06, 2018. According to this article, which constitutes Additional Art 40 of Higher Education Code numbered 2547:

“Unless a decision of secrecy is taken by the authorized institutions and organizations, the graduate theses shall be opened to access in electronic environment by the National Theses Center of the Council of Higher Education in order to contribute to science.”

It is compulsory to send all theses and dissertations to YÖK National Theses Center in Turkey. Therefore, after the said provision entered into force, "The Directive on Collecting, Organizing and Opening to Access The Theses and Dissertations in Electronic Environment" is prepared in cooperation with YÖK National Theses Center and OpenAIRE NOAD Turkey and shared with all universities in the country.

Before this regulation, theses and dissertations were closed to access for 3 years in accordance with the request of the respective author. However, it is no longer possible to prevent access to theses and dissertations except for the provisions of the regulation. In other words, the author's request is not enough to close theses and dissertations, but also university administration decision is necessary.
This improvement is an important step in the liberation of science. Henceforth, much more theses and dissertations from Turkey will be available to the scientific world.