Over 1,000 international students to learn Turkish

Turkey's Yunus Emre Institute (YEE) will teach Turkish to more than 1,000 international students in the country, it said on Friday.

Turkish will be taught at 30 different universities across 28 provinces as part of a summer school project launched by the state run institute.

A total of 1,071 students from 125 countries will take Turkish courses from July 16 - Aug.12 and will have the opportunity to reinforce their knowledge while learning about Turkish culture and visiting historic places.

The students will take part in cultural activities such as Turkish wedding, henna night and folk dance.

The international students will stay in Istanbul in the last week of the course.

- 100,000 APPLICATIONS
A total of 100,000 students from all around the world applied for the summer courses including 26,000 students from Pakistan, 3,360 from Egypt, 1,115 from Iraq, 195 from the U.S., 19 from Armenia, 52 from Israel and 895 from Palestine.

A number of students from European countries including Poland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Russia and Ukraine also applied for the courses.

At the end of the course, the students will compete in photography, video and text writing categories and narrate their Turkish experience.

"We prepared the same course program for all provinces," YEE President Seref Ateş told Anadolu Agency.

Last year, 700 international students from 57 countries were hosted for the summer courses of Yunus Emre Institute.