Confucius Institute as a Representation of Cultural Interaction Between China and Turkey in the Context of International Public Diplomacy

Abstract

Accompanying with the technological progress, especially in the defense industry, international relations, which goes through new developments day-by-day for countries to achieve success in their foreign policies, also face deadlocks, and as a result conflicts become inevitable. This presents the pinpoint where the importance of the concept of diplomacy arises. Many countries, especially global nations, attach high importance to the diplomacy and focus the fields of public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, humanitarian diplomacy, educational diplomacy, intelligence diplomacy, so on. This study analyze the cultural diplomacy of the People's Republic of China, a global power, an economic giant with a large population, using it as a soft power tool. The centers of the Confucius Institute, which started operating in 2004 and rapidly increased the number of its offices around the globe, including universities in Turkey with which it cooperates (Middle East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul Okan University and Yeditepe University) are put under discussion. The study is shaped around the activities of the Confucius Institute in Turkey, and it is observed that the activities of the relevant institute are mostly in the fields of education and teaching Chinese language.