Cultural Tours

The purpose of the TCF cultural tours is to highlight Turkey’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage and promote Turkey as a cultural and educational travel destination.

Information on any upcoming tours are listed here.

Spotlight on Turkey Program

Spotlight on Turkey Educational Program

The Turkish Cultural Foundation (TCF) partners with the World Affairs Councils of America (WACA) each year for Spotlight on Turkey, a national educational program.

Organized in cooperation with WACA and funded by TCF, the program runs a full calendar year. It focuses on giving an overview of the history of Anatolia and Turkey with a special emphasis on Turkish culture to American educators and the general public. With Teacher Workshops on Turkey in the spring, Teachers Study Tours to Turkey in the summer, and cultural programs for the public in the fall, the program emphasizes classroom learning and public education about Turkey and its contributions to the global community. As of 2015, 575 American teachers visited Turkey on the TCF Teacher Study Tours and nearly over 3,500 teachers learned about Turkey at the Teacher Workshops.

In November 2014, TCF launched a new portal dedicated to the Spotlight program and to teaching about Turkey. The TCF Education Portal is designed to expand the reach of the Spotlight program and to provide educators easy access to Lesson Plans and other educational resources on Turkey. The portal also allows educators to share lesson plans on Turkey through the Share Your Lesson Plan dropbox.

In addition to being a publicly accessible resource for everyone interested in learning and teaching about Turkey, the TCF Education Portal is designed as a platform for participants of the Spotlight program. The portal features a Teacher Lounge which facilitates networking among the TCF Study Tour teachers, past and present.

You can read more about the teachers’ journey on the TCF Study Tour Blog and on Facebook and Twitter. To order a free copy of Broad Horizons, a documentary on the TCF Teacher Study Tour, please send an email to washington@turkishculture.org.
The 2016 Tours will be announced in late 2015. Applications to participate in the TCF Teacher Study Tours are accepted only through World Affairs Councils of America chapters participating in a given year in the Spotlight on Turkey program.

Lecture Series Project

The TCF Lecture Series on Turkish Art and Culture and the TCF Culinary Arts Center - YESAM Lectures run year-round, featuring scholars, experts and practitioners with the goal to increase public knowledge on Turkish culture. The lectures take place at the Istanbul offices and at TCF-YESAM and are open to the public. TCF also partners with various institutions around the world, particularly in the United States, in organizing lectures on Turkish culture, featuring TCF resident scholars and other prominent experts. The TCF lectures at the Istanbul office and YESAM lectures can be viewed on the TCF Video Gallery.

For more information on this program, please visit here.

TCF Cultural Exchange Fellowship

The TCF Cultural Exchange Fellowship aims to support international exchanges between artists, as well as other professionals working in fields related to the arts and culture. The Fellowship is awarded competitively each year to Turkish and non-Turkish artists and other culture professionals. Individuals can apply for this TCF Fellowship to participate in a variety of programs, including conferences, exhibitions, festivals, collaborative projects in art and culture, as well as residency programs.