Turkish — Türkçe — ترکچه

Türkçe is spoken by 75 million people as their first or second language. It is also a widely spoken language in parts of Cyprus, the Balkans, and in Europe, adding another 15 million people to the Turkish-speaking realm. Turkish has become the second most spoken language in Austria and Germany after German as a result of mass immigration from Turkey under the “guest worker” agreement. Including the Kurdish people, the Turkish population constitutes the largest ethno-linguistic and religious minority in Germany. Third generation Turkish-Germans play a notable role in German society and culture as politicians, artists, writers and entrepreneurs.

Proficiency in Turkish provides students of anthropology, history, sociology, migration, literature, and linguistics access to a widely spoken first language in Europe. Moreover, Turkish belongs to the Turkic language family including Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur, Tatar, Turkmen, and Kyrgyz, which makes it possible for students of Turkish to master these languages in a relatively short time. Since Turkish also heavily borrowed from Arabic and Persian, learning modern Turkish is the first step to master Ottoman for students whose research area falls into the provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

Discover this unique agglutinative language which can convey a sentence length discourse in English only in one word as Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Japanese, Swahili and some indigenous languages of the Americas do!

Turkey has become the world’s second largest TV series exporter after the US. Turkish also unlocks for students unique insights into material and non-material cultures of Turkish speaking people. Study of Turkish allows students to experience a rare synthesis of Asia and Europe. Istanbul is literally the spot where two continents converge, and the country has been home to a rich variety of civilizations whose historical footprints are visible all over the country. Dive into the long-lasting legacies of Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Immerse yourself in the history of 18 UNESCO world heritage sites such as Cappadocia, Ephesus, Göbeklitepe, Hagia Sophia, Mount Nemrut, Troy among many, and in diverse cultural practices and perspectives of Turkish speaking people from West Asia to Germany. Explore this rich land of endless opportunities deeply rooted in history!

Hear from some of our Turkish students on why they study Turkish at UW-Madison by clicking on the videos below!

Campus Funding (Academic Year and Summer Language Study)

• Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships:
  • For the academic year the FLAS stipend is $5,000 for undergraduates and $20,000 for graduate students. Undergraduates receive up to $5,000 towards tuition each semester; graduate students receive full tuition and fees. FLAS for Turkish is supported by multiple centers on campus. See a full list here
• The Karpat Turkish Language Scholarship
• Kemal H. Karpat Center for Turkish Studies Small Grants Program:
  • The Kemal H. Karpat Center for Turkish Studies welcomes small grant applications from UW-Madison graduate students working in any area of Turkish Studies, broadly construed. Scroll down to see the application details.

National Funding

Proficiency in Turkish is increasingly valuable to government and other organizations in West Asia, Europe, and the US. Turkish is a critical language for the US Department of State, which offers overseas Critical Language Scholarship to US students.  Also, Boren Awards recipients have the opportunity to study Turkish  in the Turkish Flagship Language Initiative (TURFLI). Boren Scholars and Fellows selected for this flagship initiative receive funding for intensive language study and cultural immersion, beginning with a summer 2020 domestic program at the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Language Institute (MEDLI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by an overseas program in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Students can work in joint companies, institutions, and organizations in Turkey.  The U. S. Embassy, Foreign Service, U.S. Military offer opportunities for employment in Turkey. Teaching English as a Second language is a job in high demanded as well. Students can explore academic and scholarly work in Turkish Literatures, Comparative Literatures, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, Linguistics, and more.