Abstract:

Public diplomacy,' whose significance has only recently been comprehended by most countries, takes its core from 'soft power.' According to Joseph Nye (2005), soft power, which is the basis of public diplomacy, is based on three main sources: political values, foreign policy, and culture. Many researchers like Nye share the view that the use of cultural resources is in fact more effective in influencing the emotions and the minds of the communities of different countries. Szondi (2008), like Nye, attributes the success of foreign policy to successful cultural policies and cultural diplomacy. And the main objective of this study is to examine the TEDA project which stands for 'the Translation and Publication Grant Programme of Turkey' promoting the International Expansion of Turkish Culture, Art and Literature in the context of strengthening intercultural communication in Turkey's cultural diplomacy. In this perspective, we have conducted an examination on international publishing as part of cultural diplomacy, and investigated which literary works have been published by foreign publishers and the number of countries these works have reached along with the number of languages they were translated into as part of the 'TEDA' project. In order to identify which cultural values we have been transmitting most intensively to foreign publics, a descriptive and semantic analysis was made on twenty (20) works that have been translated into the most number of languages and therefore reached a larger variety of foreign readers. The twenty-five most active themes in the analyzed works have been identified, and the most dominant themes have been determined as, respectively, Istanbul, modernization of Turkey, the depths of human psychology, the Ottoman Empire and the perception of the East/West. Strong images formed in foreign societies of Turkey and Turkish people through these literary texts which transmit the fundamental values of our semantic world from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey are highly significant in developing cultural relations. For this reason, Turkey must make an international publishing parameter, which is one of the most advisable channels in building a country's reputation in terms of cultural diplomacy, more active and expand its targets to this aim.

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