Popular arts comprise the most varied and the most functional aspect of Turkish popular culture which forms the basis of contemporary Turkish culture. Turkish handcrafts, one integral part of popular arts (Turkish traditional art), constitute a source of handsome income. Yet, they also function as a powerful force which compels and enables our national art to attain universal dimensions. Handcrafts are the most meaningful expressions and the most important epitomes of a nation's cultural identity, for what shapes them are the events and the very basic attitudes, beliefs, and the characteristics of the period in which they are conceived. However, changes in life styles and the rapid advancement of technology have often proved to be detrimental to handcrafts themselves or to their distinctive features. It is rather undesirable that modernity or universality is achieved at the expense of the long existing aspects of traditional art. Special care, therefore, needs to be taken to ensure that national culture does not loose its very fundamental component parts and its unique characteristics during any process of modernization. The Ministry of Culture promotes and cooperates in all efforts made to preserve handcrafts -which reflect the intelligence, the creativity, and the sense of refinement of Turkish people- and to remove the possibility of their sinking into oblivion. And in this respect, the Ministry receives its greatest support from the scholars, academics, and the researchers who have devoted themselves to art. Henry Glassie's extensive study Turkish Traditional Art Today is a unique contribution to Turkish art. It is, indeed, a great and effective step in the representation of Turkish arts. This invaluable work which represents years of research was first published in the United States of America in 1993 by Indiana University as a part of a joint publication program of the Turkish Ministry of Culture. This edition is published by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, again as a part of the same program.

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