Nobel prize winner to open Turkish cultural center in Chapel Hill

When Aziz Sancar moved to the U.S. from Turkey, his wife, Gwen, said he felt isolated being so far away from his culture.

To help connect the local Turkish community and inform people about the culture, they created a Turkish cultural center in Chapel Hill.

The Sancars run the town’s current center, Carolina Türk Evi, but it has limited space ­— so they decided to create a new center.

On Nov. 21, the Chapel Hill Town Council unanimously voted to allow Gwen and Aziz to build the Sancar Turkish Cultural and Community Center.

The new center will be located at 1609 E. Franklin St. and will also include a residence for up to six Turkish scholars and students to live.

The main center will be in a separate building, allowing the Sancars to host cultural events during the week. It will be equipped with a kitchen, 110-person meeting hall, four classrooms and a library.

Gwen said there will be a garden because being outdoors is a big part of Turkish culture. She said the new center will be an improvement from the current center.

“We are inhibited, if you will, in holding a lot of events there, except on weekends since we want the scholars to have peace and quiet to study,” Gwen said.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Nancy Oates said the new center will demonstrate Chapel Hill’s dedication to the Turkish community.

In an increasingly hostile world, Oates said the center will show the town’s acceptance of diversity.

While many neighbors are excited about the center now, some were conflicted initially, said Chapel Hill Town Council member Jessica Anderson. The center sits on a busy part of Franklin Street, but it backs up to the quiet residential community on Velma Road.

Anderson said this center will provide local Turkish people with a place to celebrate holidays, hold special events and teach their kids about Turkish history.

“I think that is a huge addition for them, but also for the rest of us who want to learn more about different cultures,” she said.

Some Velma Road residents didn’t want the center to increase traffic and bring the bustle of Franklin Street into their neighborhood.

The Sancars worked with them by planting trees and bushes to beautify the area and limit walking traffic.

Integrating the community into the center is especially important to Gwen, who said her husband, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015, faced cultural challenges after moving to the U.S. He quickly realized that many Americans had little knowledge of Turkish culture.

“As a proud Turk, he thought they should know more about modern Turkey, not just the Ottoman Empire, but about what Turkey had become after World War I, in terms of education and scholarship,” she said.

@ThatIsSoGinger

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