Melda İrem Manti, Deputy Director of Yunus Emre Institute in Bucharest: Yunus Emre Institute aims to increase the cultural interaction between Turkey and other countries with a view to developing a better understanding of Turkey

Our institution is named after Yunus Emre, who was an Anatolian Sufi mystic, lived in the 13th – 14th  centuries. He is most well-known for his devotion to human values, love and social peace, which made him a symbol of these values. Yunus Emre made remarkable contributions to the development of Turkish language with his poems. He also gave messages to ensure peace prevails hatred in social life. His messages uphold humanitarian values, which have become universal today. Yunus Emre stood against discrimination on the basis of religion, language or race among people. That humanitarian philosophy became our guiding principle as the Institute in our activities. Yunus Emre Institute is active in 43 countries with 54 cultural centers. In addition to the Turkish language courses provided in these centers, Turkish language studies are promoted by supporting Turkology departments in various academic institutions. As part of its cultural work, the centers organize concerts, exhibitions, workshops, stage performances, film screenings, scientific meetings, cultural gatherings, and art courses to promote Turkish cultures to foreign audiences. Yunus Emre Institute conducts cultural diplomacy activities, monitoring Turkey’s new cultural diplomacy projects, and guiding country policies in this field. Through its art and cultural activities, Yunus Emre Institute aims to increase the cultural interaction between Turkey and other countries with a view to developing a better understanding of Turkey. Although the main theme of our artistic and cultural work is related to Turkish heritage in arts and culture, we also promote arts and cultural products of other countries to enable interaction with them through culture. Yunus Emre Institute continues to support Turkology and Turkish studies worldwide and introduce Turkey’s scientific and academic knowledge and experience to the world. In our centers in Bucharest and Constanta, which have been active since 2011, we hold Turkish classes for Romanians, organize cultural events to promote Turkish culture, and support scientific studies. We also have strong cooperation with other cultural centers in Bucharest within the EUNIC Project for the most exquisite events, including European Day of Languages, Night of the Cultural Institutes, European Film Festival, and European Literature Month. Providing information on available Turkish scholarships, the Institute also helps students who are willing to study in Turkey. We organized a series of cultural activities this year, which served to our common objective to bring Turkish and Romanian peoples together. Between February 25 and April 1, we organized our annual ‘Traditional Turkish Food Course’, where participants had the opportunity to learn cooking Turkish sweets and pastry. On May 12, 2018, we participated in the European Film Festival, organized by EUNIC. We showed the “Yellow Heat”, a modern Turkish movie. Upon our invitation, Director Mr. Fikret Reyhan visited Bucharest, along with Mr. Umut Alagül, one of the actors in the Yellow Heat. The show continued with a Q&A session, where the audience had the opportunity to examine the theme and script of the movie. We organized the conference and photography exhibition titled ‘Adakale is alive’ in Bucharest on June 26 this year. The National Library of Romania hosted the event in collaboration with the University of Bucharest, Faculty of History. H.E. Mr. Osman Koray Ertaş, Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey, participated in the event where Prof. Silvana Rachieru was kind enough to lend us her helping hand as the curator. Please stop by one of our centers, follow us on social media, and join one of our special events.   Address: Strada Vasile Lascar Nr. 96, Sector 2, Bucharest, Romania Tel: 021 211 1316 Fax: 021 211 1318 Email: [email protected]  www.yee.org.tr/romanya-bukres/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yeebukres/ Twitter: @yeebukres