Turkish language and literature education in the universities of Greece

Turkish studies in various places of the world have been ongoing since very ancient times. Established in various universities in Europe Turkish studies chairs, shed light to the different periods of Turkish and has led to many important studies. The provisions of Turkish Language classes are a major part of conducting Turkish studies. In contrast to Europe, the Greek universities, have been created Turkish studies in recent history and started to create curricula on the Turkish language. Certainly this has political, cultural and historical reasons. The main purpose of this study is to look at the place of Turkish Language and Literature courses on the academic level and to provide an overview of the situation. For this purpose, the research reviews universities in Greece have been scanned looking at their educational programs and identifying relevant departments. The information was collected through the internet and other secondary sources and the resulting findings were examined one by one under the title of universities' names. The content of the study is constituted by National and Kapodistrian University of Athens - Faculty of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, Democritus University of Thrace - Department of Language, Literature and Civilization of the Black Sea Countries, University of Western Macedonia – Balkan Studies, University of the Aegean - Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of Macedonia - Department of Balkan Slavic and Oriental Studies and Ionian University - Department of Foreign Languages, Translation & Interpretingthat have the courses of Turkish Language and Literature in higher education level in Greece. The sample consisted of the same sections of the same universities. The study place is Greece and the language of the research is Greek; because of that the names of the universities, the departments and the titles of the courses are kept in original and the translations are given by the author in Turkish in italic letters and in brackets. Finally, the study concludes that Turkish studies have only recently started to develop in Greece and therefore the most extensive content and course program is that one of the Faculty of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies located in National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Keywords: Turkish in Greek Universities, Turkish Language and Literature Education in Greece