Hacettepe University is a public research university based in Ankara, Turkey. Its origins lie in the child-health work that İhsan Doğramacı began within Ankara University's Faculty of Medicine in the mid-1950s, which grew into an Institute of Child Health in 1958 and, across the following decade, into a cluster of health-related schools known collectively as the Hacettepe Science Centre. Parliament granted that cluster independent university status under Law No. 892 on 8 July 1967, establishing an institution organised at first around faculties of medicine, science, engineering, and social and administrative sciences.

Teaching has since expanded well beyond the original medical core. The university now spans roughly fifteen faculties together with a comparable number of graduate institutes, several vocational schools, and the Ankara State Conservatory, covering undergraduate through doctoral study in Turkish and English. Health sciences remain its defining tradition: the faculties of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing, together with the affiliated teaching hospitals, have long shaped clinical training and public-health practice in Turkey. Engineering, the natural sciences, education, economics and the fine arts form the other substantial pillars of its academic profile.

Bibliometric rankings place Hacettepe among the top five universities in Turkey by research output and citation impact, with its strongest showings in medicine, chemistry and biology, and it maintains an extensive network of research and application centres across clinical, technological and cultural fields. The university is distributed over several sites. The compact Sıhhiye campus in central Ankara concentrates the health sciences and the university hospitals, while the far larger Beytepe campus, some thirteen kilometres from the city centre, accommodates the humanities, sciences, engineering and central administration. Further campuses at Beşevler, Balâ, Polatlı and Sincan house the conservatory and vocational programmes. Total enrolment stands at roughly 45,000 students, and the university's position in the national capital keeps it close to Turkey's ministries, public-health institutions and research agencies.