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
Asya Abdullah councils. She was elected as co-chair of the PYD in June 2012 and led the party with Salih Muslim until September 2017. As PYD co-chair, Abdullah represented Rojava in the context of the Syrian Civil War. In an interview, Abdullah declared that “No solution will be found through violence” but that “The formation of the cantons and the construction of democratic autonomy is providing an example for the peoples of the country.” In November 2016, Abdullah gave a keynote speech to the New World Summit in Oslo, describing the revolutionary “Rojava experiment". Abdullah also represented the PYD at a meeting