Gazi University is one of the few universities in Turkey whose history dates back to the 1920s. When it was first built, it had 9 faculties, 12 colleges and 4 institutes. However, the number of the units increased rapidly. Today, Gazi University, with its 11 faculties, 1 school, 3 vocational schools of higher education, 35 research centers and 5 graduate institutes carrying out educational and research activities, maintains its claim to be a higher education institution befitting to Gazi Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, from whom it got its name.

In Gazi University education is provided in the fields of education, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering, architecture, health and sport sciences. In addition to the students coming from all around the country, Gazi is one of the most renowned universities abroad with over 1900 foreign students from other nations including the Turkic states and their communities. The university not only meets the needs of its own academic staff but also trains academic staff for other universities with more than 5 thousand students studying in graduate and postgraduate programmes. Moreover Gazi University takes active role in student exchange program activities with many foreign universities.

Gazi is one of the largest universities with its faculties from education to medicine, sports sciences to engineering, technology to natural sciences, dentistry to pharmacy. There are approximately 37 thousand registered students, 3171 administrators and 4366 academic staff.

Since its foundation, as an international research university Gazi, has been one of the few leading universities in Turkey in terms of depth and breadth of international ties and the amount of funds generated from international research projects. Gazi University is also one of Turkey's most competitive universities. Each year, among the students taking the National University Entrance Examination, over 1/3 of the 5000 applicants with the highest scores attend Gazi University.