Turkish

Turkish is the language of a nation of more than eighty million people, a major regional power that spans Europe and Asia and has been a crossroads of civilisations for thousands of years. It is a structurally distinctive language, with an agglutinative morphology that works very differently from European languages, and studying it at the University of Oxford means engaging with one of the world's great ancient and modern cultures at the deepest academic level. Oxford's tutorial-based approach to language study is intensive and individual, developing your linguistic and intellectual capabilities in close dialogue with specialists in the field.

This four-year full-time programme develops your Turkish to an advanced level, encompassing grammar, literature, oral proficiency and the ability to engage with complex texts in a range of registers. You will read Ottoman as well as modern Turkish, engaging with a literary and historical tradition that stretches back centuries. Alongside language study you will encounter the history, culture, literature, politics and society of Turkey and the wider Turkic world, developing the contextual knowledge that serious engagement with a language demands.

Oxford's library resources and the depth of its Turkish studies tradition mean you will have access to exceptional scholarly support.

Graduates from Turkish and area studies degrees at Oxford move into careers in diplomacy, the foreign office, international organisations, journalism, think tanks, academic research, business with Turkey or Central Asia, and translation and interpreting. The rarity of serious Turkish language expertise in the UK graduate market makes graduates genuinely distinctive. Many also continue to postgraduate study in Turkish, Ottoman history, Middle Eastern studies, international relations or linguistics, and the rigour of Oxford's undergraduate training provides an excellent foundation for advanced academic work.