Abdullah Gül University first steps towards founding Abdullah Gul University were taken in 2007, by the Kayseri City Council and other city notables. The aim was to raise the profile of education in Kayseri in line with the city’s own vision of its development. The University was named after the prominent Kayseri citizen and 11th president of the Turkish Republic, Abdullah Gül and was formally inaugurated on July 21, 2010. The university’s first campus was established on the former site of Turkey’s first industrial complex. In the future, the university will also open a second campus, known as Mimar Sinan. AGU’s current campus
Bekir Coşkun in 1987 and moved to "Hurriyet" in 1993. In an article written some weeks before the July 2007 General Elections, he described AK Party supporters as "men who scratch their belly" (). After Abdullah Gül's victory in the presidential elections of 2007, Coşkun stated, "he will not be my President", upon which the Prime Minister Erdoğan retorted by saying "he should abdicate his citizenship and leave the country if he doesn't consider [Gul] as his President". This led to an outcry among supporters of secularism in the country that people who didn't share AK Party's ideology would no longer be