Alterlab Yok Tez

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.
2. 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

Request	Correct skill
Search Turkish journal articles on DergiPark	alterlab-dergipark
Check a journal's TR Dizin index status / search the national citation index	alterlab-trdizin
Look up an academic's profile / supervised-thesis list / affiliation on YÖK Akademik	alterlab-yok-akademik
University program admission statistics (kontenjan, taban puan) on YÖK Atlas	alterlab-yokatlas
Compute doçentlik (associate-professorship) eligibility points	alterlab-docentlik-eligibility
Compute akademik teşvik (academic-incentive) score	alterlab-akademik-tesvik
Hands-on thesis writing / supervision / defense coaching (chapters, viva)	alterlab-thesis-supervisor
Build a PRISMA systematic review over biomedical/scientific databases	alterlab-literature-review
Manage a Zotero/BibTeX reference library	alterlab-citation-mgmt
Türkçe APA-7 / TR Dizin house style rules in general (not a thesis cite)	alterlab-tr-academic-style

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.

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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):

Tool	Use it for
search_yok_tez_detailed	Topic, title, author or advisor search: keyword (+ keyword_2, keyword_3, operator_1/operator_2 = and/or), search_field, match_type, and coded filters thesis_type, permission_status, thesis_status, language, year_start, year_end
list_yok_tez_anabilim_dali → search_yok_tez_by_anabilim_dali	Narrow to departments (anabilim dalı codes, ≤ 15 per call) — the replacement for the dropped department filter
get_yok_tez_thesis_details	Advisor, university → institute → department path, TR/EN abstracts and keywords, ready-made citation strings — without downloading the PDF
get_yok_tez_document_markdown	One PDF page of an İzinli thesis as Markdown
list_recent_yok_tez	Theses uploaded in the last 15 days, or this year's corpus (no keyword needed)

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.

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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).
2. Up to three terms per call, joined by and/or (the site's VE/VEYA). There is no NOT operator — filter unwanted hits locally.
3. 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.
4. Pick the field deliberately. search_field 7 (Tümü) for topic recall; 1/6/4/5 for precision passes; 2/3 for authors and advisors.

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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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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}.

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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?

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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.