Ten years ago (1997) Les Arts Turcs was founded by a collection of painters, photographers, artists, singers, journalists, professional guides and entrepreneurs. The aim of Les Arts Turcs is to meet people here internationally and explore little traveled routes of communication between cultures that rarely and often communicate, to bridge artistic and cultural gaps that have formed over centuries in an attempt to take responsibilty for international humanistic heritage. Les Arts Turcs, makes a point where all of the people all over the world can come here - all ethnicities and all types of artists - in a denationalization of art - discovering and sharing culture and artistic differences. Les Arts Turcs of Istanbul aspires toward the state of an international cultural center. Having achieved this to a small degree, having many friends, from New York to New Zealand, who come here in the form of artists and adventurers and students - people who have, through time, grown the ideas presented here. Les Arts Turcs, wishes to help a foriegner appreciate Ancient and Modern Turkey and Turkish culture. This could, while educating a traveller, also make a local more conscious of this exquisite, metropolitan environments history, difference, and future possibilities. It could be an example for other cities that have nearly been wiped-out by a culturally unsympathetic kind of tourism, which dissassociates, frustrates, and generally gives the wrong idea to locals about the type of people that come as visitors to their countries - here is the difference between a traveller and a tourist. And this is the difference between Les Arts Turcs and industrial tourism. Activities worked by Les Arts Turcs include_once: ethnic music, Ottoman, Turkish/Greek, Turkish/Armenian, Turkish/Gypsie, Turkish-Pop, Jews and Folk, and Sufi music. There is also full guidance as to the process of the Whirling Dervish ceremony, and Sufi community in Turkey. Les Arts Turcs gives painting, henna, paper-marblizing and calligraphy classes (has a permanent exhibition of paintings, statuettes, and art at its Sultanahmet address). It is a meeting place for local and international artists -- journalists, writers, painters, photographers, professional guides, and others.

Address: Incili Çavus Sok. No: 37 Kat:3 (Yerebatan Sarayi Girisi Arkasi), Alemdar Mah. Sultanahmet 34400 Istanbul, Turkey
Telephone: 90 (212) 511 75 56
Fax: 90 (212) 520 77 43
Website: http://www.lesartsturcs.com/