Zaher Albik-Ankara
Parallel to Turkey's international and regional rise, some Turkish endowments began international activities to introduce Turkish culture and language to various countries of the world.
One of the most prominent of these endowments, the Institution of Yunus Imre, proposed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has activities reaching seventy countries around the world, and has 48 cultural centers that he oversees, teaches the Turkish language, and organizes scientific, artistic and cultural activities.
Yunus Imre is a Turkish poet and mystic, who lived in the period of the collapse of the Seljuk state early in the 14th century, died in 1321 AD at the age of seventy, and his poetic style is described as an easy abstention, and his poems dealt with the love of God and man and the values of justice and human virtues.
Cultural exchange
In this context, the head of the Yunus Emre Cultural Institute, Sharaf H, stated that the institute, through its activities related to teaching the Turkish language and introducing Turkish culture, aims to increase cultural exchange between Turkey and other countries, and develop friendship with it.
According to the president of the institute, H, the first criterion that is studied before the opening of a center is the population of the region in which the center will open, and the second criterion is the requests that the institute receives to open centers for it, and the third criterion is the existence of a cultural cooperation agreement with the country in which the center will open.
"The Yunus-Imre Institute has represented Turkey on many national and international occasions, as well as its multiple branches organizing art exhibitions to display Ottoman documents in the framework of the Days of Cultural Heritage Program, as well as introducing the characters who are icons in the Turkish cultural space, such as poets and mystics, Younis Imre, and Hajj Bakdash and me.
H pointed out that the reason for calling the institute the name of Yunus Emre is due to the ideas of the Turkish mystic, which had global dimensions that exceed the limits of geography and time, as its principles still represent a reference for many intellectual schools in the current era, noting that Yunus Emre wrote his poems and wrote his Sufi ideas In Turkish language, despite the domination of the Arabic and Persian languages of his time.
He explained that after completing the course lessons and taking exams, the institute is awarded a "Tomer" certificate recognized by all universities, since Turkish public universities require that international students who plan to join them obtain this certificate.
The head of the Yunus Institution denied his accusations that the institute practices the cultural invasion of other peoples, stating that "the institute's projects are only carried out with the approval or request of the governments of the countries in which we have branches, and that the goal of our external activities is cultural exchange and not cultural invasion."
International spread
The Yunus Imre Institute was established on May 5, 2007, and according to its official website, the institute is "a public endowment institution that implements cultural and artistic activities and provides necessary support for scientific activities through which Turkey is introduced and its language is foreign to the centers it has established outside the country."
According to officials, the institute of Yunus-Emre, which spread around the world, has benefited more than one hundred thousand people as of November 2018. The institute also has partnerships with about a hundred universities in several countries, through which teachers of the Turkish language are sent to them, within the framework of the center's project Aiming at increasing interest in the Turkish language. More than 322 teachers work in its branches, including a large number of Turks, among them 189 Arab and foreign teachers.
In addition to general language courses, the Institute offers specialized courses in the Turkish language used in the business world, and those used in the academic field, and others.
Younis command centers have been opened first in the Balkans and the Arab world, and institutes of the Institute - in addition to teaching the Turkish language - in its various branches organize seminars, conferences and artistic activities in many countries of the world, including Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Qatar and Palestine.
The institute also has branches in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Iran, Afghanistan, Japan, and European countries including Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, in addition to South Africa, Georgia And others.
The institute organizes a free two-week summer scholarship as part of a cultural exchange program, and also offers a distance-learning Turkish grant for students at various levels.