The purpose of this article is to examine counselor education and the current state of affairs regarding program accreditation and counselor credentialing efforts in Turkey. The paper considers the Turkish education and higher education systems, followed by a brief history of counseling and current counselor education in Turkey and, finally, discusses accreditation and credentialing processes in the country. Attention to these matters and, in particular, standardization and restructuring of undergraduate and graduate counseling programs is considered increasingly important for the development of counseling in Turkey.

The goal of this study was to determine existing attitudes of Turkish counselor educators regarding the need to emphasize prevention and developmental issues in counselor education programs and to propose ways of incorporating these functions into the counseling area as necessary. Data were collected via questionnaire from 104 counselor educators who have been working at Turkish universities. Of the 50 professors, 23 instructors and 31 research assistants who responded, 36 had prior school counselor experience and 68 had not. The counselor educators reported they had given less attention to prevention and developmental issues in their courses than other issues, but indicated positive attitudes towards teaching preventive and developmental issues.

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