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Abstract
This paper explores contemporary Turkey through the lens of education. Special attention is given to the recent curriculum reform of 2005 and the new Social Studies textbooks that have been redesigned as an aspect of Turkey's seeking admission to the European Union. The Ministry of Education policy statements about the new curriculum and textbooks involve a claim that they promote critical thinking and open-mindedness, along with a student-centred approach. However, a close analysis of the new textbooks shows that they are still imbued with an exclusive and narrow definition of nationalism and citizenship, backed by the myth of origin, ethnocentrism and essentialism. The paper discusses these issues in the context of the compatibility of a State-generated national ethos with democratic citizenship and argues that a notion of cosmopolitan education would extend the borders of a narrowly defined Turkish national identity.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Centre for the hospitality and TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey) for providing financial support during this period, and the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights Education at the University of Leeds for its hospitality.
Notes
1. For a broad analysis of the ‘Studies in National Security’ course see CitationAltinay.
2. For the case of Hasan and Eylem Zengin v. Turkey see <http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/viewhbkm.asp?hudoc-en&action=html&table=F69A27FD8FB86142BF01C1166DEA398649&key=65103&highlight> (accessed 8 August 2008).
3. For a summary of the indictment in English see <http://www.haber10.com/haber/117160/> (accessed 8 August 2008).
4. This is an ongoing project conducted by the History Foundation of Turkey involving the assessment of new textbooks in every subject by volunteers via pre-defined human rights criteria. The first project was undertaken between 2001 and 2004 and yielded several edited volumes (see Ceylan and Irzik).
5. In the case of Singapore for instance, CitationWong and Apple show that since the pedagogic device was fragmented the ruling power in Singapore has not been successful in utilising the school curriculum to build an integrated Singapore nation.
6. For instance, while the schooling percentage in primary schools in the EU countries has reached 100 per cent, it is still 87.6 per cent in Turkey in the 1999–2000 academic year (MEB Mufredat Gelistirme Sureci).
7. The EFA report of Turkey asserts that the new age requires people who “(a) have the ability to adopt to technological advances and changes such advances bring about, (b) have the ability to renew themselves continuously relative to advanced technologies, beginning with computer literacy, (c) have an in-depth knowledge of their occupational subjects, (d) have the competence to communicate orally and in writing in at least one foreign language, and (e) have the skills to work in an interdisciplinary mode”.
8. Turkey is often analysed by both domestic and foreign observers within an evolutionary historical understanding, which focuses on its lack of modernity and therefore its deficiencies regarding gender equality, urbanisation or human rights, etc. Against such a linear reading, Göle points out that “modern social imaginaries cross boundaries and circulate but take a different twist and a slightly modified accent in non-Western context – they take on a sense of extra. We can read extra both as external to the West and as additional and unordinary. The evolutionary concept of historical change can hardly imagine that there can be a surplus or excess of modernity in some domains of social life in non-Western contexts” (184).
9. The existence of ancient or proto-Turks in Anatolian soil was sought in the archaeological excavations made during the early republican period (Ersanli).
10. British history textbooks, too, offer a vision of multicultural nation quite differently to schoolbooks in France and Germany. For the representation of the nation in history books (see CitationSchiffauer and Sunier).
11. This paradox is not specific to Turkey. As Hedtke, Zimenkova and Hippe note democratisation at the national level and Europeanisation on the supranational level are the two main processes challenging citizenship education in European countries. The authors point out that despite several attempts, mostly initiated by the Council of Europe, for the Europeanisation of citizenship education, there is still a divergence between imagining a common European citizenship and national governments’ citizenship education policies.