In March, under the Spotlight on Turkey program, local chapters of The World Affairs Councils of America (WACA) carried on organizing teacher workshops on Turkey.  So far, World Affairs Council of Tennessee; World Affairs Council of Seattle, WA; Santa Fe Council on International Relations, NM; and the Dayton Council on World Affairs, OH have successfully hosted the workshops featuring keynote speakers and showcasing Turkish  traditional and culinary art. The events provided local teachers and principals an opportunity to learn about Turkey’s culture and history through day long seminars.

On March 9, YESAM hosted economist, writer and researcher, M. Bülent Varlık, who presented a seminar on "Anatolian Cuisine through the Eyes of the Itinerants.” This seminar discussed the views and notes taken by various foreign itinerants who visited Istanbul and Anatolia between the 15^th and 20^th centuries. The seminar focused on different food products (e.g. fruits, vegetables, meat, drinks) and explained how each food product was consumed and dishes were prepared in those times. Past YESAM lectures are periodically uploaded for online viewing in the TCF Video Gallery.

Banu Özden of TCF-YESAM hosted exchange students from Syracuse University for a lecture on “Exploring Turkey’s Culinary Heritage.”

Turkish cooking traditions are highlighted every month with the YESAM Recipe of the Month, which features “Lamb and Fresh Garlic Yoghurt Stew” a specialty of Gaziantep, which was recognized as a member of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in the field of gastronomy in 2015.

The Golden Age of King Midas, a world premier exhibition at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, continues to run through November 27, 2016. TCF provided a major grant to underwrite the exhibition. The exhibition features artifacts unearthed in the main tumulus in Gordion and lent to the exhibition by Turkey, as well as a number of important objects from the tumuli in Lydia and Lycia. These pieces will appear alongside select examples from the Penn Museum's own collections. Archaeologists from Penn have been excavating and conducting research at Gordion since 1950.

The 8th Annual Nazım Hikmet Poetry Festival will be held on April 10, 2016 at the Page Walker Arts & History Center in Cary, NC. Underwritten by a TCF grant since its inception, the festival is organized by the American Turkish Association of North Carolina and celebrates the life and poetry of Nazım Hikmet. The festival also pays tribute to a different international poet each year.  This year's festival focus is the Anatolian poet and mystic Rumi and the selected poet is Betty Adcock. Preceded by an international poetry competition, finalists are invited to read their poetry at the Festival alongside other noted poets. Scrapbooks of past festivals' winning poems can be ordered here.

Makam New York's program Turkish Story Time, supported by a TCF grant, has begun weekly recordings in New York City. A first in New York, Turkish Story Time brings children and their caregivers together to learn about Turkish culture through reading stories in Turkish; learning songs, rhymes, and riddles; introducing instruments; and advancing literacy. The program will be recorded every Thursday at 4:00 pm at Book Culture on Columbus in New York City. Stories and materials will be available on Makam New York's website, and the program will be video recorded and streamed online. The program is free and open to the public.

Dr. Chris Roosevelt, Associate Professor at Koç University and Director of the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC), delivered a lecture on “Archaeology, technology, and sustainability: Approaches to the past in the Gediz Valley, western Turkey” at the Turkish Cultural Foundation (TCF) Istanbul Office on March 3, 2016.

The next TCF lecture will take place on April 12, 2016 and feature Prof. Dr. Tülay Artan, who will present a lecture entitled “An impressive probate inventory of 1588: Ali Çelebi, antiquarianism and collecting in the Ottoman world” at the TCF Istanbul office.

For more information on upcoming TCF Lecture Series in Turkish Culture and Art, visit here. All TCF Istanbul lectures are recorded and may be watched online on the TCF Video Gallery.

Dr. Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2013), a composer, singer, performer and scholar, performed the role of Sümbül and played ud, ney, and zurna in his opera “Othello in the Seraglio: The Tragedy of Sümbül the Black Eunuch” at the Oberon in Cambridge, MA on March 1-2, 2016.

Mansur Bildik (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2016), a bağlama artist, gave a workshop "Gemischt, Karışık, Mixed" at Kulturzentrum Spittelberg im Amerlinghaus in Vienna, Austria on March 15, 2016. He also gave a bağlama workshop at the University of Texas at Austin on March 31, 2016.

Lerna Babikyan (TCF Cultural Exchange Fellow-2016) choreographed the play, "Kein Ausgang," which was performed at Theater Expedition Metropolis in Berlin, Germany from March 18-20, 2016.