phpmailer subject from variable creates encoding issue - php

Question

I am using phpmailer to send emails using php.
When i try to send special (Turkish) character within the subject, it displays html entity in the sent email. If I include the same variable in the body part, it works fine. Please see below:
$mail->Subject = $stuname."PhD Qualifying Exam Application";
I have tried html_entity_decode function but didnt work.
Also, if I type the Turkish character instead of getting from a variable, it works fine.
Finally, if I print the variable before sending the email, it prints fine without any encoding problem. But number of character is larger than it should be..
So, any idea why I am having encoding problem in subject are when getting the value from a variable?
Thank you!
PS:
i am also adding these headers:
$mail->SetLanguage("tr", "phpmailer/language");
$mail->CharSet ="utf-8";
$mail->Encoding="base64";

Answer 1

I found a solution, none of the html decoding functions were working so I wrote my own function for Turkish characters.
function replacehtml($inputText) {
$replace = array('İ','ı','Ö','ö','Ü','ü','Ç','ç','Ğ','ğ','Ş','ş');
$search = array('İ','ı','Ö','ö','Ü','ü','Ç','ç','Ğ','ğ','Ş','ş');
$outputText=str_replace($search, $replace, $inputText);
return $outputText;
}