Dear Esteemed Scholars,

The 5th International Symposium on Turkish Language Teaching and Turkology in the Balkans, to be held in 2026, will take place in Skopje on November 5–7, 2026, in cooperation with International Balkan University, under the main theme “Folk Literature and Oral Culture in the Balkans.”

Throughout history, the Balkan region has been a place where different cultures have interacted, possessing a rich heritage of oral culture and folk literature. In this context, oral narratives, folk poetry, folkloric elements, and cultural memory both carry traces of the past and play an important role in contemporary processes of identity formation.

This symposium aims to examine the historical development and current transformations of folk literature and oral culture in the Balkans through interdisciplinary approaches. The evaluation of oral culture elements from the perspectives of Turkish language teaching and Turkology is also one of the symposium’s key focal points.

Sub-themes of the symposium:

A. Genres and Narrative Traditions
• Balkan Turkish epics and heroic narratives
• Balkan folk tales
• Folk stories and the oral narrative tradition

B. Special Narrative Figures
• Nasreddin Hodja narratives
• Köroğlu narratives
• Sarı Saltuk narratives

C. Poetry and Musical Forms
• Themes and motifs in Balkan folk songs (türkü)
• The mani tradition

D. Short Oral Genres
• Proverbs and idioms
• Riddles and tongue twisters

E. Theoretical and Analytical Approaches
• Thematic and motif structure of Balkan Turkish folk literature
• Cultural identity and intercultural interaction in Balkan Turkish folk literature

F. Oral Culture and Process
• Preservation, transmission and transcription of oral culture

G. Ritual and Tradition
• The Ayvaz festival tradition

H. Turkish Language Teaching in the Balkans
• Teaching Turkish as a mother tongue
• Teaching Turkish as a foreign language