The year 1999 constituted one of the milestones in the history of the Turkish National Police (TNP). Since that time, the TNP has been sending its distinguished officers to the United States and several other countries for graduate studies. Initially, this program started with the aim of obtaining Master’s degrees and then expanded to earn doctoral degrees. Both the vision of the high level police administrators, such as Dr. Recep Gultekin, and the success of TNP members played a role in this expansion.

The mission statement of the Turkish Institute for Police Studies (TIPS) declares that the aim of TIPS is to combine the practical experience of the TNP in policing areas with the academic and theoretical foundation represented by master’s and doctoral education in American universities. As observed by many scholars and police administrators, TNP members have shown great success in operationalizing the mission statement into reality. While TNP members have created environments for combining practice and theory by organizing international conferences, workshops, and many other meetings, they have also been working extensively on obtaining graduate degrees. The number of Master’s and Ph.D. graduates has exceeded 150 officers.

In the initial period, 14 members of the TNP graduated and earned Master’s degrees from different universities. These officers returned to Turkey after completing their missions. These first graduates encouraged police administrators in Turkey to expand the program.

In the expansion period, over 150 TNP members earned Master’s degrees. These officers continued their education by enrolling in doctoral programs such as Criminal Justice, Public Administration, Library and Information Science, and Educational Leadership. The number of earned doctoral degrees is 32. Besides these graduates, over 50 TNP officers are ABD (All But Dissertation) status. These statistics indicate that this education program is progressing as planned and the TNP officers continue to meet the expectations set forth by the TNP.