Dating violence may be more than one, such as physical, emotional, verbal, economic, and sexual. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of dating violence and types of violence exposed in university students. This was a cross – sectional study. The study was conducted on 727 university student. The data were collected by using a questionnaire prepared by the researchers upon the literature review. The questionnaire consisted of two main parts. Socio-demographic characteristics of the students, their habits such as smoking and alcohol, their exposure to violence by their dates, and types of exposed violence. Ethics committee approval was obtained. The data were assessed by using number, percentage, mean, chi-square test. Significance level was accepted as p˂0.05. Prevalence of dating violence was 25.3% in the study. 48.3% of the students, who were subject to violence, were exposed to physical violence, 51% to verbal violence, 85.3% to emotional violence, and 18.4% to sexual violence. There was a significant difference between exposure of dating violence and alcohol use and smoking among the students; while 20.1% of those exposed to dating violence used alcohol, 25.5% were smokers (p<0.05). Consequently, about one-fourth of university students were determined to be exposed to dating violence. The most frequent type of violence experienced by the students was emotional violence and smoking and alcohol use affected exposure to violence. In accordance with these results, it is recommended to conduct studies to prevent dating violence and to strengthen the abused.Violence, at the present time, is an important social problem which has an ever-increasing prevalence, has been discussed about, and has been tried to find solutions (Aliyev and Karakuş, 2015). It has been reported that more than half of women in developing countries are exposed to violence by their husband/partner (Monghaddam-Hosseini, Asadi, Akaberi, ve Hashemian, 2013; Reed et al., 2016). As is in numerous countries in the world, women are exposed to violence in Turkey too. In Hacettepe University’s research for population studies, it was stated that 36% of women throughout Turkey were exposed to physical violence and 12% were exposed to sexual violence. In other words, about 4 in every 10 women were exposed to physical violence by their husbands or partners (Hacettepe University Research for Population Studies, 2015). While several studies have been conducted concerning domestic violence exposure of women in Turkey, there is no adequate number of studies on dating violence. However, when international studies conducted on dating violence have been examined, it has been observed that the rate of dating violence is higher at least as much as rate of domestic violence (Coker, Sanderson, Cantu, Huerta, and Fadden, 2008; Luthra and Gidycz, 2006; Straus, 2004). Even though violence is a problem that might be seen in every field of human life and has been gradually increasing over the world, dating violence has been recently recognized as an important public health concern among university students in Turkey and its complex nature cannot be understood completely. Although there are numerous studies on domestic violence in Turkey, the number of studies on dating violence is limited. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine type of violence perpetrated against university students by their dates as well as prevalence of dating violence and risk factors related to violence. We think that this study is important in terms of increasing awareness of university students about dating violence and filling the deficiency of related literature in Turkey. Method The cross sectional study was conducted in order to determine the prevalence of dating violence, types of violence exposed, and the effective factors in university students. The population of the study consisted of 2252 students studying at Faculties of Arts and Science, Education, Economics and Administrative Sciences, and Agriculture of Ahi Evran University during spring term in 2013-2014 academic year. The data A table “estimating a population proportion with specified absolute precision” was used to determine the sample size of the study (Lwanga ve Lemeshow, 1991). The intimate partner violence (IPV) rate in Turkey was determined as 61.4% and the sample size was determined as 722 (60.0%) based on this rate with an error margin of 0.03 and a confidence interval of 90% by using the tables prepared by the World Health Organization (Lwanga ve Lemeshow, 1991). were collected by using a questionnaire prepared by the researchers upon the literature review (Campbell, 2002; Coker et al., 2002; Coker et al., 2008; Glass et al., 2003; Luthra and Gidycz, 2006; Straus, 2004; Tuz et al., 2015). The questionnaire consisted of the following two titles: Socio-demographic characteristics of the students, their habits such as smoking and alcohol, their exposure to violence by their dates, and types of exposed violence. Preliminary application of the study was conducted on 20 students with similar characteristics before the study. It was observed as a result of preliminary application that data collection tool could be applied within 20 minutes, the questions in data collection tools were comprehensible and sufficient. Questionnaires were given by entering classrooms after the permission was taken from lecturer of the course at the course hour in the university. The data were assessed by using number, percentage, mean, chisquare, test. Significance level was accepted as p˂0.05. Before starting the study, written permission from University Rectorship and related deanships and ethics committee approval from Ahi Evran University Ethics Committee were taken. The aim of study was explained to students who participated in the study and their written and oral consents were taken. Results Average age of the students was 21.13±2.32, 62.3% were female, and 96.6% were single. 69.5% of the studen