Language needs determination inteaching Turkish as a foreign language: An example of Belarus

These days people who live in such East Slavic countries as Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have an increase interest in East languages. In recent times countries like China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey are stepping forward both in political and tourist terms. Turkey as aprominent East country attracts attention of those who are interested in its rich history, aut hentic culture, ancient traditions and distinct language. That is why the amount of students who want to study the Turkish language in Minsk State Linguistic University escalates with each passing year. There are those who choose Turkish being in spired by Turkish serials and those who visited Turkey in tourist aims. In future graduates work in different spheres like intepreting, education and intercultural communication. The aim of this research is to specify Turkish language needs of students who study it as a foreign language in Minsk State Linguistic University and to determine wheather the needs of language learners vary according to variables like faculty, sex, period of studying Turkish and foreign language proficiency. Research data have been collected with the help of the scale used by Iwai in his book "Japanese Language Needs Analysis" (1998). The validity and credibility of this scale have been formed and translated intoTurkish by Çangal (2013). The intented sample of students who study Turkish at 3 different faculties in Minsk State Linguistic University in 2020 was 56 students and the actual sample was 49 learners of the supposed sample. The data collected was analyzed with the help of SPSS 24 program and arithmetic mean, t-test, percentage and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) techniques were applied. Founded on the output of data analysis, the students` language needs were separated into several sub-categories, which were ― individual interests and needs, education and job possibilities, conduct of business and conversation in the classroom. At the end of the research, some proposals were presented in order to improve the quality of Turkish as a foreign language education in Belarus. Keywords: Teaching Turkish as a foreign language, language need analysis, Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus