The TCF Culinary Arts Center-YESAM is also proud to announce the first culinary cultural tour of the year. The tour will take place on May 29-31 and will visit the towns of Isparta and Burdur, Turkey. It is timed to coincide with the rose harvest in the region. For more information and to register, please visit here.

TCF is pleased to announce that 47 teachers from 12 different local chapters of the World Affairs Councils of America-WACA  have been selected to participate in the TCF Teacher Study Tours to Turkey in the summer of 2015. The teachers were selected from among several hundreds of participants of the Teacher Workshops on Turkey, which were organized by the councils over the past three months with support from a TCF major grant. They will travel in two groups and will visit numerous historical and cultural sites throughout Turkey including Istanbul, Canakkale, Bursa, Kusadasi, and Ankara. Part of the TCF-WACA Spotlight on Turkey national educational program, the selected teachers will join the over 520 American teachers who have traveled to Turkey on the TCF Teacher Study Tours since 2007.

TCF provided a major grant to underwrite Access Orpheus, a program of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra that brought 250 public school students from throughout New York City to a performance of Fazıl Say with the Orpheus Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on April 11. Say joined the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for a series of performances and audience engagement programs in New York and Europe in April. The program aims to expand audiences’ awareness of Turkey’s ongoing contribution to western classical music.

TCF provided a major grant to the Turkish American Cultural Society of  New England-TACSNE  in support of the 14^th Annual Boston Turkish Film and Music Festival, which took place from March 19-April 25, and was co-presented with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The festival featured over two dozen Turkish films, giving Boston film enthusiasts the opportunity to explore Turkish cinema. The festival also featured a special screening of The Water Diviner, a film by Russell Crowe about the Gallipoli campaign war in tribute to the centennial of the war. The festival’s music portion featured concerts by Neotolia, Esthema, and Tahir Aydoğdu, which took place at the Goethe Institute. More information on the festival can be found here.

The International Children’s Friendship Festival took place on April 11-12 in Seattle. Sponsored since its inception through TCF grants, the annual festival is organized by the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington and is run entirely by children, in celebration of Turkish National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. Growing each year in its international representation of children from all over the world, this year’s festival featured over 500 children from 36 countries and Seattle communities. As in past years, the festival was recognized with proclamations by the Governor of Washington and the Mayor of Seattle. The festival is augmented by a Children’s Forum, and the findings of this year's topic, Health and Citizenship, were presented to the Seattle City Council at a special session on April 6.

A TCF grant supported the 7^th Annual Nazım Hikmet Poetry Festival organized by the American Turkish Association of North Carolina-ATA-NC. The festival was held on April 26 at the Page Walker Arts & History Center in Cary, NC and celebrated the life and poetry of Nazım Hikmet, who is widely regarded as the greatest contemporary Turkish poet. The festival also pays tribute to a different international poet each year. This year’s selected poet is Anna Akhmatova. At the event, finalists of the poetry competition that precedes each festival were invited to read their poetry alongside other noted poets. Scrapbooks of past festivals’ winning poems can be ordered here.

TCF is pleased to announce the release of A Useless Man, Selected Short Stories by Sait Faik Abasıyanık (1906-1954), one of Turkey’s leading authors. Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe, the book is published by Archipelago Books, a non-profit press devoted to contemporary and classic world literature, with support from TCF. To order the book, please visit here.

TCF Cultural Heritage Preservation and Natural Dyes Laboratory-DATU team led by Dr. Recep Karadağ published a new scientific article in the Journal of Textiles and Engineer. The article, entitled “Determination of Antimicrobial Activity of the Dyed Silk Fabrics with Some Natural Dyes,” is available here.

On April 21, YESAM hosted Prof. Dr. Evangelia Balta, Director of the National Hellenic Foundation in Athens, who presented a seminar on “Olive Oil on both Sides of the Aegean Sea.” This seminar discussed the history, production, and consumption of olive oil both in Greece and Turkey. YESAM also collaborated with NAR Restaurant for a seminar and dinner event on Sephardic Cuisine on April 18. The seminar was presented by journalist and food culture researcher Nedim Atilla.

In May, YESAM will host Dr. Nihal Bursa for a seminar on “Powerful Scent: The Egyptian Bazaar,” which will be presented in Turkish. Past YESAM lectures are periodically uploaded for online viewing on the TCF Video Gallery.

Turkish cooking traditions are highlighted every month with the YESAM Recipe of the Month, which features “Stuffed and Fried Sardines,” a local dish from Istanbul made with springtime sardines.

On April 21, Prof. Dr. Doğan Kuban gave a lecture entitled, "Prospect on the Future of Istanbul" at the TCF Istanbul Office. Dr. Kuban is a Professor Emeritus of Ottoman architecture and history at Istanbul Technical University.

All TCF Istanbul lectures recorded and may be watched online on the TCF Video Gallery. The latest video additions are the lectures on “The Cultural Aspects of the Livelihoods of the Exchanged Greek Refugees” by Prof. Dr. Evangelia Balta, “The Eternal Longing for the Roots” by İpek Özel, and “Crafts and Craftspeople under the Ottomans” by Suraiya Faroqhi. For more information on upcoming Lecture Series in Turkish Culture and Art, please visit here.

Tahir Aydoğdu (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2015) gave a lecture on kanun and performed a concert at the University of Texas, Austin on April 7 and 8. He also performed in the Boston Turkish Film Festival on April 9.

Dr. Ekin Çoraklı (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2015) presented her concert-lecture at the "Modernist Musics and Political Aesthetics" conference held at the University of Nottingham, UK on April 8-10.

Tayfun Serttaş (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2014) gave a talk at the Bibliotheque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou in Paris on April 15. He held an exhibition entitled "100 Years Ago, 100 Years After" (100 ans avant, 100 ans apres) at Moments Artistiques in Paris on April 17-27.

Ipek Kotan (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2014) exhibited her works in Ceramic Art London at the Royal College of Art in London on April 17-19.

Jerome Symons (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2014) exhibited his work in "BOLERO," a nomad exhibition and international art project, in Ankara at the Gallery Torun in April 17-19 and Başkent University on April 20-27.

Kate Clow and Huseyin Eryurt (TCF Academic Fellow-2014) presented a paper on "Sustainable Cultural Routes in Turkey and the World" in the Workshop of an Urartu Cultural Corridor Project (Urartu Kültür Koridoru Çalıştayı) in Van on April 17.

Prof. Roberley Bell (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2015) ran a workshop entitled "The Contemporary Souvenir: Re-imagining Place" at the Department of Graphic Design in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Anadolu University on April 12-22.