Yunus Emre Institute teaches Turkish free of charge to thousands of people from 144 countries in the world through its website learnturkish.com, which was launched during the pandemic.

The interest in Turkish gradually rises parallel to the breakthrough that Turkey has made in recent years. The number of people desiring to learn Turkish exponentially increases thanks to the use of unique Turkey landscapes in TV series and the exhibition of cultural/traditional elements and introduction of historical periods/persons in these series, coupled with tourism advertisements and the training opportunities offered by Turkey.

381.000 PEOPLE FROM 194 COUNTRIES LEARN TURKISH

learnturkish.com website was launched by Yunus Emre Institute in order to focus this interest on learning Turkish at one single hub. Visitors to the site are offered different options. Students can go to "Self-Learn Turkish" section to learn Turkish interactively and digitally without need for a tutor. This system was put into service by the Institute in 2017 and currently teaches Turkish to 381,000 registered users from 194 countries around the world.

Another option that welcomes those who visit learnturkish.com is the "Learn Turkish Online" button. Those who want to learn Turkish click on this option to register and wait for the Institute to open a free online Turkish course.

12.000 PEOPLE FROM 133 COUNTRIES  MADE REGISTRATION IN OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER 

Evaluating the requests received in October and November, the Institute opened free online courses for 12,000 people applying from 133 countries and held the first lesson of these courses today. Most of the students stated that it was the first time they took Turkish lessons and it was a great excitement to talk to an expert whose native language was Turkish and who was thousands of kilometers away from them. Turkish instructors who are experts in their field teach in these entirely digital courses.

DEMAND BOOM FROM SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES

There is a growing demand to learn Turkish even in countries such as Nicaragua, Togo and Brunei, which you may have difficulty to locate on the map. The great interest from South America continues to surprise. There is a demand boom particularly from South American countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Guatemala, where Turkish TV series are quite popular. However, geographically closer countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt lead the demand as always. Officials from the Institute state that they have received a significant number of applications from Italy, Spain and Malaysia as well.

The courses are organized based on the demand from the students. There are weekday, weekend, daytime and evening groups for instruction. Since there is demand from countries in almost all time zones, the Institute officials state that Turkish language instruction continues almost every hour.