Obstacles to special education for students with intellectual disabilities in Turkey: a brief report

Abstract

Turkey regulates the special education of students with disabilities and, particularly, those who have intellectual disabilities (ID) based on international and national legal texts. However, the gap between law and practice cannot be denied. The existence of obstacles to special education for students with disabilities or ID continues in Turkey. This brief report is composed of four parts. First, it describes Turkey’s basic characteristics related to disability and its judicial framework. Second, it aligns the basic obstacles to attaining universal education that includes students with disabilities, including educational segregation, discrimination, ambiguous schooling and external factors, respectively. In the third part, some recommendations are presented that aim to fill the gaps in special education. The commentary concludes with a discussion of the attainable targets for future directions.

Keywords:

• cultural responsiveness
• schooling
• inclusion
• obstacles to special education
• students with intellectual disabilities
• Turkey