Haldun Yavas Talks about Turkish Cuisine and Culture

Janine Aloisi: Another special guest is Haldun Yavas he is the Executive Director
of the Turkish Cultural Center. This Center focuses on
strengthening the ties between the United States and Turkey. In the
month of February, they will be organizing several events in
celebration of Asure Day. We had the chance to speak with Mr.
Yavas, let’s watch.

Haldun Yavas: You organize seminar s, concerts, trips to Turkey, lectures and
courses. For example, as a concert we had Ambrosias concert with
the volume there which is 12—. We organize annual holiday
receptions which represent Hanukkah, Christmas and at the same
time our holiday which is the holiday for sacrifice which is called
Eid el-Adha also.

We have educational lectures, seminars, which is for example
small business administrations consultants came to the Cultural
Center and they told the listeners how to manage the business, how
to become a successful businessman. Even though a Turkish
Cultural Center had just six months of experience in the city, the
center did a great job like our biggest event was in Waldorf Astoria
and it was named as Annual Ramadan Friendship Dinner. It was in
Waldorf Astoria one of the best hotel in the City, it was in October
5, 2006 and Hilary Clinton the first lady came to the event and she
gave a wonderful speech. She had some wonderful words in terms
of the necessity of inter faith dialogue, the necessity of inter
cultural dialogue plus what Turkish Cultural Center brings to the
city.

Also we organize lectures within our cultural center like the
previous one was the vice president of Horton University. He was
our guest and he joined one of our seminars, we have also your
Turkish Language Courses here and we teach Turkish. On the
other side, we give ESL courses for the Turkish Students who
come from Turkey and they need assistance and especially for
speech, for spelling.

We have a library here and the Turkish library, the Turkish
Cultural Centers and library is a resource for the people for the
American people, for the academicians who make research. In the
history of Turkey, history of Ottoman’s, this library is a resource
for everyone. We will start Turkish cooking classes here. Turkish
American Women’s Association which is one of our committee
within the Turkish Cultural Center they are starting the Turkish
cooking lesson, I guess which is amazing. I mean most of the
American people love Baklava. They love dolma so the Turkish
Cultural Center is the place for them to learn also how to cook
Baklava.

As Turkish Cultural Center, we spend the whole month of
February as the month of Asure and we will make several events.
Normally, Asure day is 29th of January but instead of just
celebrating one day of Asure we make a whole month of Asure
which is February will be the month of Asure for us. So like we
will expand our celebration to a month and we will give out Asure
to the people who need the homeless people and especially in New
York City.

There are 7,000 homeless people in New York City and we will try
to reach as much as we can .And we just had a meeting with the
commissioner of the New York City for the homeless department
and we told him about our idea what we will do and he said please
I mean make the event as much as possible and reach out as much
as possible to the homeless people. And at the same time we will
give Asure to the elder people and we will visit nursing homes and
we are planning to give out like almost 10,000 Asure in a whole
month.

We as Turkish Cultural Center believe in that the inter faith
dialogue, the inter cultural dialogue is the only solution for the
global peace. For this purpose, Turkish Cultural Center strengthens
the ties between the people of United States and Turkey.