An institute named after a 13th-century Turkish poet and Sufi mystic will be setting down roots in London as part of an effort to match Turkey’s growing foreign policy depth with an equivalent scope of cultural influence.
“Before us, there was no other organization promoting Turkish culture abroad. We are only two years old, while the British Council is celebrating its 70th year in Turkey,” Professor Ali Fuat Bilkan, chairman of the Yunus Emre Institute, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview Friday.
Bilkan said he hoped his institute would become a Turkish version of the British Council, Germany’s Goethe Institute and Spain’s Cervantes Institute, all of which have successfully promoted their countries’ language, culture, art and history abroad.
“It is no longer possible to conduct diplomacy [only] within official patterns led by the foreign minister. Public diplomacy is needed to present Turkey’s changing image to foreigners,” Muharrem Hilmi from the Turkish think tank TASAM told the Daily News on Monday.
“Today's Turkey is not the one in the 1980s or the 1990s. There are attempts to draw a new picture of Turkey abroad,” Hilmi said. “Official and private organizations can fill a significant gap.”
In recent years, Turkey has expanded its diplomatic efforts in the region as part of an attempt to create “strategic depth” in its foreign policy, moves mirrored by national carrier Turkish Airlines, or THY, broadening its flight network and the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, or TRT, expanding its broadcasts to reach Turks living outside Turkey.
“We are not a political but a cultural organization. However, we are taking Turkey’s strategic priorities into consideration when opening centers abroad,” Bilkan told the Daily News.
The official inauguration of the Yunus Emre Institute office in the United Kingdom, an event that will be marked by Turkish President Abdullah Gül’s scheduled trip to London in November, comes on the heels of similar initiatives to open centers in Sarajevo, Bosnia; Tirana, Albania; Berlin and Cologne, Germany; Skopje, Macedonia; and Astana, Kazakhstan.
The Yunus Emre Institute plans to open centers in the coming months in Moscow and Damascus, parallel to Ankara’s political efforts to develop closer relationships with Russia and Syria as part of its “zero problems with neighbors” policy.
“We are talking with the Russians about the project and we were informed by our embassy in Damascus that 500 applicants are waiting to get Turkish language courses,” Bilkan said. “Turkey is no longer tied to one particular direction. We are developing good ties with Britain but at the same time establishing alliances with Russia and Syria. Turkey is creating its own alternatives.”
The idea of opening the institute dates back to the early 2000s when Gül was serving as foreign minister. Supported by civil-society organizations and businesses, the institute has Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, the architect of the government’s foreign policy, on its board of trustees and a member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, on its supervisory board.
Though it was established during the term in power of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, the institute is free of government control, Bilkan said, explaining that it aims to meet the demand for Turkish language courses in other countries while contributing to the establishment of academic departments specializing in Turkology and training new Turkologists.
‘Strong interest in Turkey in the UK’
The protocol to open a center in London was signed July 27 between the Yunus Emre Institute and the British Council after receiving support from the British government. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan first communicated the idea to his British counterpart, David Cameron, who paid a landmark visit to Turkey last month. The center is being seen as the latest fruit of the new “golden age” in the Turkish-British relationship.
“We know there is strong interest now in Turkey in the U.K. because of its growing world profile both economically and politically,” the British Council’s Turkey director, Jeff Streeter, told the Daily News.
“It is also true that people’s understanding of Turkey in the U.K. needs to be improved. People are not aware of the diversity of Turkey; the modern and ancient culture it has to offer the world is not as well understood as it could be, not as well known as it should be,” Streeter said. “Therefore, this is, I think, a real opportunity for Turkey to increase that understanding.”
The Yunus Emre Institute will not only provide Turkish language courses in foreign countries but also grant scholarships to host foreign students in Turkey.
“We’ll tell them about Ottoman history and culture in Bursa, about Mevlana in Konya, the Republican history in Atatürk’s Mausoleum in Ankara and the culture in Istanbul,” Bilkan said. “The goal is to keep the culture alive while also increasing intercultural dialogue and exchange.”
