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On January 11th, 2022, JICA Turkey Office launched the JICA Program for Japanese Studies ("JICA Chair") in collaboration with Middle East Technical University, to provide an online lecture on "Japan after World War II and Japan-China relations in the Modern Era".

Japan is the first country that has modernized from a non-Western background to establish a free, democratic, prosperous, and peace-loving nation based on the rule of law, without losing much of its tradition and identity. Japan's developing experiences as well as extensive experience of development cooperation through official development assistance (ODA) toward Asian countries would be helpful for other countries. By sharing Japan's experiences and lessons learned through its modernization and development cooperation, Japan can lead development studies globally and thereby contribute to sustainable development.

"JICA Chair" offers an opportunity to study the respective academic fields at Japanese graduate schools, and Japanese studies that explores Japan's modernization and development cooperation experiences in light of its historical and cultural background. In the first program of "JICA Chair", the prominent expert, Prof. Akio Takahara, Executive Director of JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development, delivered an online lecture on "Japan after World War II and Japan-China relations in the Modern Era". The lecture was followed by undergraduate and graduate students and academicians of more than 90 audiences from Turkey and abroad with great interest. Prof. Takahara underlined also impact of USA-China interactions on Japanese-China relationships. Due to very impressive explanation of Prof. Takahara, the program expanded beyond the schedule and participants could have chance to ask so many questions from the first hand.

In the program, JICA Turkey Office's Chief Representative Mr. Nobuhiro Ikuro mentioned that JICA has been working as an implementing agency of ODA in collaboration with Turkish people for a long time and its activities had started in 1959, when the first Turkish trainees visited Japan in the area of disaster risk reduction.

The seminar had a good participation by METU undergraduate and graduate students, METU academic staff and students, and academics outside METU. Students in the class indicated that they greatly benefited from the lecture and it was a great learning opportunity. Despite being a Zoom seminar, the speaker was able to keep the attention of the audience throughout the event. Students diligently took note of the lecture. They noted that although Japanese perspective on China was known to them, they still learned many new details about different aspects of the relationship.

The program was ended with the conclusion and announcement of Dr. Serif Onur Bahçeçik, Chair of Asian Studies of METU's Social Sciences Institute that such program will be continued by METU in close cooperation with JICA.