YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi — Turkish National Thesis Search

YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi (the Higher Education Council's National Thesis Center) is the single mandatory repository for every Turkish graduate thesis — yüksek lisans (master's), doktora (doctorate), tıpta/diş/eczacılıkta uzmanlık (medical/dental/pharmacy specialty), and sanatta yeterlik (art proficiency). It is the authoritative source for two faculty workflows this skill serves:

1. Literature discovery — finding existing Turkish dissertations for a

review, by topic, danışman (advisor), university, or year.

1. *Pre-proposal özgünlük (originality) checks* — before a supervisor

approves a student's thesis topic, scanning whether the same work already exists, is restricted, or is registered as in preparation.

This skill is discovery + metadata harvesting + citation, not bulk full-text download (full text is online-view-only — see access model below).

When to Use This Skill

YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi'nde "sürdürülebilir mimari" konulu tezleri ara
Bir öğrencim "sanal prodüksiyon" üzerine doktora yapmak istiyor; daha önce yapılmış mı?
Find every doctoral dissertation supervised by Prof. X at IEU
Cite this YÖK thesis in APA 7 (Turkish)
Is this thesis topic novel, or has it already been done in Turkey?

→ Build paired Turkish/English queries, run them through the yoktez-mcp connector, dedupe results into a {thesis_no, year, university, danışman, title, izin, durum} table, and — when asked — emit a Türkçe APA-7 citation.

Does NOT Trigger — route these elsewhere

This skill answers "does this Turkish thesis exist / has this been done, and how do I cite it?" — it does not write the thesis, judge journals, or score careers.

The data path: yoktez-mcp

There is no official public API for Ulusal Tez Merkezi. The maintained community path is the `saidsurucu/yoktez-mcp` MCP server (MIT licensed); prefer it over scraping.

• Hosted connector: https://yoktezmcp.fastmcp.app/mcp (YokTezMCP 3.3.1 on

2026-09-23)

• Local: uvx --from git+https://github.com/saidsurucu/yoktez-mcp yoktez-mcp

YÖK redesigned its search in 2026: one field per query, up to three terms joined by VE/VEYA, and dropdown filters. The university / institute / department text filters and the thesis-number lookup are gone. The connector's six tools (live tools/list; the repo README still shows the older two):

Filter codes (verified live, full table in references/endpoints.md): search_field 7 Tümü (default) / 1 Tez Adı / 2 Yazar / 3 Danışman / 4 Konu / 5 Anahtar Kelime / 6 Özet; match_type 2 contains (default) / 1 exact; thesis_type 1 Yüksek Lisans, 2 Doktora, 3 Tıpta Uzmanlık, 4 Sanatta Yeterlik, 5–7 specialty types; permission_status 0 Tümü / 1 İzinli / 2 İzinsiz; thesis_status 0 Tümü / 3 Onaylandı (the connector's default) / 1 Hazırlanıyor.

If the connector is unavailable, the search screen at https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/tarama.jsp can be driven in a real browser. Don't invent a JSON/REST endpoint — none is published.

scripts/yok_tez_query.py builds the connector arguments offline from a plain description (TR/EN topics, advisor, thesis type, years, originality mode) and formats citations; it makes no network call.

Search craft (apply these automatically)

Full rules with worked examples: references/search_syntax.md.

1. Search stems that survive substring matching. The default match is

contains, so sürdürülebilir finds every inflected form — but Turkish turns a final k/ç/t/p into ğ/c/d/b before a suffix, so cut it: okuryazarl found 622 title hits where okuryazarlık found 277 (2025+, live check).

1. Up to three terms per call, joined by `and`/`or` (the site's VE/VEYA). There

is no NOT operator — filter unwanted hits locally.

1. Run BOTH a Turkish and an English query. English terms only hit the English

title/abstract/keyword fields, so an all-Turkish query silently misses theses indexed in English, and vice-versa.

1. Pick the field deliberately. search_field 7 (Tümü) for topic recall;

1/6/4/5 for precision passes; 2/3 for authors and advisors.

Originality / supervision check (the repeatable recipe)

When a supervisor asks "has this thesis topic already been done?":

1. Build paired TR + EN queries (stems, OR for synonyms) in search_field 7.
2. Constrain thesis_type (e.g. 2 Doktora) and a year_start–year_end

window only if the user asked for them.

1. Set `permission_status` `0` (Tümü) so İzinsiz (restricted, abstract-only)

theses surface, and `thesis_status` `0` so Hazırlanıyor (in-preparation) theses surface too — the connector defaults to approved theses only, and restricted or in-progress work is exactly what a naive search hides.

1. Return a deduplicated table — `{thesis_no, year, university, danışman,

title, izin, durum}, newest first — fetching advisors with get_yok_tez_thesis_details` for the rows that matter.

1. State explicitly that this is registry coverage, not a plagiarism /

text-similarity score (iThenticate/Turnitin territory, out of scope here).

Advisor at a given university: search search_field 3 with the advisor's name (plus thesis_type if needed), keep the rows whose university_info matches, and confirm the advisor on each with get_yok_tez_thesis_details — names repeat across universities.

Access model (set correct expectations)

• Full text is online-view-only for İzinli (permitted) theses — viewable in

the browser, no photocopy / bulk download. get_yok_tez_document_markdown works only on permitted theses.

• *Abstracts (özet) are available* even when full text is restricted

(get_yok_tez_thesis_details returns both TR and EN abstracts).

• **İzinsiz (restricted) theses** show metadata + abstract only; the print copy

is reachable via TÜBESS / inter-library loan through a university library.

• Pre-2006 closed theses can be opened by the author submitting a *Tez

Yayımlama İzin Belgesi* (thesis-publication permission document).

• Legal basis: 2547 sayılı Kanun Ek Madde 40 (added by Law 7100, Art. 10,

2018) — theses are made electronically accessible by YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi unless an authorized gizlilik (confidentiality) decision applies. YÖK's FAQ states no fixed maximum embargo length; do not assert a "12-month cap."

Full detail in references/access_legal.md.

Caps and bulk harvest

• ~2,000 results per batch. YÖK returns at most about 2,000 rows

(results_in_batch) even when total_results_found is larger. If a total is near or above that, split by year range, thesis type, or department and merge locally.

• The community mirror tezara.org may help with large metadata harvests, but its

export and cap-bypass claims are unverified — see references/endpoints.md.

• Bulk Turkish↔English query expansion, advisor-name normalization and CSV dedup are

repetitive, privacy-neutral work — a good fit for a local model or a short script.

Citing a YÖK thesis (Türkçe APA-7)

Map the YÖK Tez No directly to APA's Yayın No. (publication number). The scripts/yok_tez_query.py cite mode formats both states; rules and more examples in references/citation_apa7.md.

• Published / permitted (has a Yayın No.):

Soyad, A. (Yıl). Tez başlığı (Yayın No. _NNNNNN_) [Tez türü, Üniversite Adı]. YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi.

• Unpublished / restricted:

Soyad, A. (Yıl). Tez başlığı [Yayımlanmamış tez türü tezi]. Üniversite Adı.

get_yok_tez_thesis_details also returns YÖK's own APA string (capitalised surname, "Tez No.") — convert it to the form above unless the journal asks for YÖK's. Optionally emit BibTeX @phdthesis / @mastersthesis with note = {YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi, Tez No. NNNNNN}.

Self-check before reporting

• Did you run both a Turkish and an English query, with stems that survive

substring matching?

• For an originality check, did you set **permission_status 0 and

thesis_status 0** so restricted and in-preparation theses surfaced?

• Did any query approach the ~2,000 batch cap? If so, split and re-run.
• Did you filter university/advisor matches on the returned fields rather than

assume a filter the 2026 search no longer has?

• Are citations using Tez No → Yayın No. with the correct

published vs unpublished template?

• Did you state that registry coverage ≠ a text-similarity / plagiarism score?

References

• references/endpoints.md — the 2026 search screen,

the live yoktez-mcp tool surface and filter codes, result shape, the batch cap, tezara.org.

• references/search_syntax.md — stems and

consonant alternation, and/or terms, TR+EN pairing, field choice, worked query.

• references/access_legal.md — İzinli/İzinsiz,

TÜBESS, pre-2006 opening, 2547 Ek Madde 40 legal basis, embargo facts.

• references/citation_apa7.md — Türkçe APA-7

thesis templates, the Tez No → Yayın No. mapping, YÖK's own citation strings.

Part of the AlterLab Academic Skills suite.