Intercultural Dialogue Yunus Emre Institute

The overall objective of the project was to form an effective network among cultural institutes of the EU and Turkey through intense cultural exchange in the framework of collaborative activities. The purpose of this contract was to provide technical assistance to the Yunus Emre Institute (YEI) in enhancing intercultural dialogue (ICD) between civil societies in Turkey and Europe and in developing capacity of the YEI in grant scheme management along with collaboration, development and implementation of long term multinational/multilateral joint cultural initiatives and communication and promotion activities.

Having started operations in 2009, the YEI has more than 55 cultural centres abroad and overall has more than 140 contact points in nearly 70 different countries, with an expectation that the outreach would include 100 countries by 2023. Apart from the Turkish education given in the cultural centres, Turkology departments and Turkish teaching were supported with the co-operations made with different educational institutions in different countries. Several activities were organized to promote Turkish culture and art through the cultural centres, and YEI represented Turkey in many national or international events. YEI also carried out operations to promote opportunities and capacity of Turkey in scientific, academic and technological fields next to the cultural diplomacy activities.
As of 2017, there were a total of 441 personnel in the Foundation/Institute, 91 in the country and 350 abroad.