I make no apology for writing this a day late - I didn't get to bed until 0130 and have left it to the following morning to produce the day's blog.  A timetable of the day might be the best way to deal with the events.

0845 Pick up from my hotel in Istanbul with three colleagues from the International Faculty, to head off to do a launch for a new Sheffield EMBA programme. We are driven across the bridge from the European to the Asian side of the city.

0915 Arrive at Sehir University.  Sehir is a new institution, founded only in 2008 and taking its first students in 2010.  It is a public university but supported by a strong private foundation. It already has impressive premises and, as I find out later from talking to the President of the Foundation, a very strong set of educational and wider principles.  We have already 'inspected' it to assure ourselves that it will be an effective partner for Sheffield and found it so.  Reputation is measured in Turkey by the admissions grades of the lowest-ranked students to be admitted from the national entrance exam: and Sehir already lies in 3rd place among the 20 or so universities in Istanbul.  The Executive MBA programme, will have its core teaching delivered by colleagues from our International Faculty in Thessaloniki, but a number of Sheffuield staff will also be involved.  It is Professor Mehmet Demibag from the Management School who has brokered the arrangement.  But although we are here for a Managament programme, I discover in conversation with Sehir colleageus that there are real opportunities for links in Industrial Engineering and in International and Commercial Law.  I shall follow these possibilities up on my return to Sheffield.

1000 We do the launch event.  There are television teams from three Turkish channels present and afterwards I do an interview to camera for one of them.  (Yesterday I did a 20 minute live interview on a major Turkish channel after the mid-morning news, with an interviewer who roamed widely over issues of university admission, globalisation, the Russell Group, research-led learning and a number of other key topics.)  Our launch involves brief speeches from the President of the University's foundation, from the Rector (who is a distinguished political scientist who has a weekly TV political chat show that I had watched the previous evening), the Principal of our International College, and me.  The President of the Foundation speaks about the blend of Greek philosophy, British modernity and pragmatism, and Turkish Islamic-inflected moral values.  Although he speaks in Turkish I pick up on key elements of his message - and the rest is explained to me afterwards.

1200 We head to a restaurant in a beautiful park looking over the Bosphorus for a lunch to celebrate what we are sure will be a successful collaboration. The President of the Foundation explains his philosophy of trying to bring different cultures and understandings of the world together.  He has a PhD on the economic history of Tokugawa Japan - in other words before the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and the opening of Japan to the rest of the world - and we can see some parallels with the history of Ottoman and modern Turkey.  I also found out how the Islamic attitude to the paying of interest results in such monies being donated to foundations for the support of education, health care and other projects of public benefit.   

1400 I am delivered back to my hotel to pick up my luggage and then driven on to the airport - a 1 hour journey of around 25 km through Istanbul's chaotic traffic.  I fly from Istanbul to Thessaloniki, changing airlines and planes in Athens.  The links between the two cities are immense but not always fully acknowledged.  The last Ottoman sultan was exiled from Istanbul to Thessaloniki after the final Balkan War, whilst the founder of modern Turkey (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) was born in Thessaloniki. But a direct air link between the two cities only started last month, and operates only four days a week - and not when I need it.

2100 I arrive at my hotel in Thessaloniki and quickly head out to join others in a local taverna for a meal. The others are the head of the Management School (Professor Keith Glaister) and a colleague (Dr Tim Vorley), the President and International Officer of the Student Union (Josh Forstenzer and Mina Kasherova), and a senior colleague from Learning and Teaching Services (Tom Rhodes) who has looked after Sheffield's relationship with City College, our International Faculty, for many years.  We are joined by colleagues from Thessaloniki for a meal and the planning of discussions of agendas for the next two days.  Our main tasks are to forge stronger links between students in Sheffield and Thessaloniki, to discuss future plans for new activities, and to attend a meeting of the South-East European Research Centre.

2359 Our meal and group planning over, I head to a bar with Tim Vorley to talk through a visit we made two months ago to Sofia, and the day's launch in Istanbul.  We also consider the possibilities of an initiative to start delivering Sheffield programmes in Moscow.  But we are conscious of Napoleon's experience: we shall plan more fully and time our activities better than he did.

One question I was asked from the floor at the launch in Istanbul was what advantage would Sheffield gain from programmes delivered elsewhere.  My answer was that we have mbitions to deliver the Sheffield experience to students who for one reason or another will not be able to come to Yorkshire to benefit from our high quality education.  And in working in such an important country as Turkey we will raise its profile within Sheffield - to our staff and to our students.  As one of the fastest-growing economies in the world (a 9% GDP growth rate last year), Turkey demands our attention and we should recognise that connections with acacdemic colleagues and students will be of enormous benefit to us in extending our agility as an institution to play on the global educational stage.

My other blogs for this month are scheduled for 8th, 16th, 21st and 27th.