Abstract:
Diplomacy practice with the use of culture as the tool has been implemented by Indonesia through Indonesia Art and Culture Scholarship (IACS) program. IACS is government of Indonesia under Directorate of Public Diplomacy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs strategy to enhance the country’s image through giving youth from foreign country to learn culture directly in Indonesia. Timor-Leste is chosen as one of the targeted country for IACS in order to create harmonious relations despite the history of East Timor separation from Indonesia and the story of human rights violations happened during the separation process. This thesis thus shown the commencement of Indonesia Art and Culture Scholarship within the year of 2015 and 2018 in order to find out how Indonesia perform the implementation of its cultural diplomacy toward Timor-Leste with the use of art and culture as the tool of diplomacy. With the result, the awardees of IACS from Timor-Leste have positive impression of Indonesia diversity in culture on their mind and also promoting Indonesia culture in every places they went including their home country. The qualitative research method is used with books, journals, articles, as the secondary sources, and government publications and speeches from officials of Indonesia government as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of Indonesia to become the primary sources.
