Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
INONU UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, cilt.16, sa.2, ss.173-186, 2025 (TRDizin)
Since the establishment of the Republic of Türkiye, new universities have been founded pursuant to state policies aimed at meeting the growing demand for university graduates, and in relation to the need for academic staff to serve at these institutions, various solutions have been sought, including the training of academic personnel at advanced universities either abroad or domestically. The statutory service obligation stipulated under Article 35 of the Higher Education Law No. 2547 constitutes a legal instrument designed to ensure that academic staff trained within the country are assigned to universities facing shortages of qualified personnel. Within this framework, academic staff who are appointed to pursue postgraduate studies at domestic universities are required to serve for a specified period at the universities that sponsored their assignment. Although the law itself prescribes a sanction to compel compliance with this obligation, in practice additional instruments are employed, notably the signing of Letters of Undertaking by the academic staff and the execution of Suretyship Agreements by guarantors. For a comprehensive understanding of the legal framework governing this statutory service obligation, it is necessary to examine both the legal foundations of the obligation itself and the validity requirements of the Letters of Undertaking and Suretyship Agreements taken to secure its performance. At this juncture, the interaction between status law, from which the service obligation originates, and contract law, through which it is reinforced, as well as the legal implications of this interaction, are of particular significance for appreciating the true nature of the statutory service obligation.