The Turkish archery will be included in a school curriculum in Malaysia as a result of the Archers Project carried out by the Yunus Emre Institute and the Archers Foundation. 

The Archers Project has started  to yield fruits. The project was launched last November in order to promote the Turkish archery worldwide by the Archers Foundation which works for the promotion of the ancestral sports, especially archery, with their national, historic, sportive, artistic and cultural aspects, and the Yunus Erme Institute which promotes Turkey’s accumulation and values in the world with its over 50 cultural centers in 44 countries and 154 contact points across the world.  

The project aims at strengthening friendship and cultural ties among countries by organizing educational, cultural and sportive activities in various countries in connection with the Turkish archery. In the first phase of the project, 550 trainees were given 36 hour basic training in the Yunus Emre Institutes in Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Morocco, Palestine, Iran, Japan, Qatar, Kazakhstan, TRNC, Lebanon, Malaysia, Egypt, Poland, Serbia, Sudan and Jordan. 40 sports people who were selected from among those trainees were given traditional Turkish archery training in Istanbul.    

Their training program included various topics from making Ottoman range arrows to bow setting-up, arrow shooting techniques to scoring system. After they returned to their home countries, they began giving courses  on the “Turkish archery” in the special classes allocated for that purpose in the Yunus Emre Institutes by using related curriculum items and hand-made archery materials. This way, all the people who were interested in the Turkish archery were given an opportunity to receive training and have shooting exercises. Seminars, exhibitions and performance shows related to the Turkish archery were also organized in those 16 countries.   

Following such activities, which were met with great interest, many institutions from different cultures and locations such as Kazakhstan Archery Federation, Federation of Romany Associations and Sanjak Bosnian National Council have asked to learn and teach Turkish archery. Malaysia, one of the countries where archery lessons were given, has begun to include Turkish archery in school curriculum.  

In a statement to AA correspondent, Yunus Emre Institute President Prof Dr. Şeref Ateş said that they had introduced to the world both the works of the Archers Foundation in Turkey and their excellent working methods. He said that the second phase of the courses is about the begin and that there is a huge interest in the courses with hundreds of people having already applied. He went on to say: 

“Such relations have a triggering character. For instance, there is a request  to include Turkish archery in the curriculum of a school in Malaysia. We are now working on this. Turkish archery courses will be given there. This example shows that if you introduce something from Turkey with a certain standard, it may lead to new ways of cooperation. 

Our main objective is to increase the number of people with connections with Turkey. Such institutional cooperation will be helpful for a positive perception about Turkey. We have told the Malaysian authorities that we would seriously support their proposal. This can happen in a short period of time. The Yunus Emre Institute will provide support both in terms of academic content and materials in relation to this proposal.”