The history of the Department goes back to 1972 when it first started as a subprogram of the Department of English Language and Literature at Faculty of Social and Administrative Sciences. Upon the reconstruction of higher education system by YÖK (Council of Higher Education) in 1982, it was reconstructed as a division of the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Faculty of Letters. Since 1994, it has been an independent department at the same faculty and is known to be the first and only linguistics program using English as a medium of instruction.