Relying on a theoretical frame developed in reference to an interdisciplinary research field, this article provides a critical analysis of Turkey's citizenship education (CE) curriculum with a view to revealing discourses that inhibit the promotion of cosmopolitan values of human rights, democratic citizenship and diversity. The analysis demonstrates that a complementary set of ethno-religious, statist and neoliberal discourses undermines the cosmopolitan values. The inharmonious patchwork of these two sets of conflicting discourses raises the question of whether CE in Turkey really empowers students to support democracy. This question reveals the significance of developing a CE curriculum underpinned by a consistent set of socio-political values in Turkey and elsewhere.

In response to the United Nation's (UN) Decade for Human Rights Education Initiative, the Turkish Ministry of National Education changed the title of citizenship education courses from 'Citizenship Studies' to 'Citizenship and Human Rights Education' in 1995. However, this curriculum reform was overshadowed by the rise to power of a political Islamist party. The secularist military toppled the first Islamist party-led government in the name of preserving the principle of laicism. Announced after the 1997 coup, the main textbook for the Citizenship and Human Rights Education course showed a profound influence of the militaristic discourses as evidenced by the negative depiction of the Kurdish people and political Islamists and the hagiographic portrayal of Atatürk and the army. By drawing on interviews with key informants, archival/public policy documentation and textbooks, this paper argues that the curriculum reform began with the participation in the UN initiative ended with the military's instrumentalisation of the subject because it was launched with no recognition of Turkey's human rights and democracy problems.

Öz. Geleneksel vatandaşlık eğitimi Soğuk Savaş sonrası yaşanan köklü değişimlerden etkilenmiş ve modern vatandaşlık eğitimine doğru evrilmeye başlamıştır. Geleneksel vatandaşlık eğitimi tekçi bir ulusal kimlik inşa etmeyi, homojen bir toplum imajı oluşturmayı, mevcut politik sistemin nasıl işlediğine dair bilgileri genç kuşaklara aktarmayı amaçlarken, modern vatandaşlık eğitimi öğrencilerin insan hakları, demokrasi, hukukun üstünlüğü ve farklılıklara saygı gibi değerleri özümsemesini ve politik katılım yetkinliklerini geliştirmeyi hedeflemektedir. Türkiye'de modern vatandaşlık eğitimine geçiş 1990'lı yıllarda uluslararası eğitim projelerinin etkisiyle başlamış ve hala devam etmektedir. Bu çalışma, 2018 Sosyal Bilgiler Dersi Öğretim Programı'nın ne tür bir vatandaşlık eğitimi öngördüğünü incelemektedir. Söz konusu öğretim programı eleştirel söylem analizi yönteminden yararlanarak çözümlenmiş, ortaya çıkan bulgular vatandaşlık eğitimi literatürü referans alınarak yorumlanmıştır. Elde edilen bulgulara göre, 2018 öğretim programı, yoğun olarak geleneksel vatandaşlık eğitiminin, sınırlı olarak ise modern vatandaşlık eğitiminin özelliklerini yansıtmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın bulguları, söz konusu programın daha etkin uygulanmasına ve gelecekte yapılacak program geliştirme çalışmalarına olumlu katkılar sunabilir.

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In an effort to support the curricular institutionalisation of human rights education (HRE) as a school subject, Walter Parker has proposed a curriculum model based on powerful knowledge (PK) thesis developed by a group of social realist educators. This article aims to contribute to this worthwhile endeavour to develop a consensual HRE curriculum model by identifying four issues with Parker's proposition. While Parker argues the prevalence of constructivism impeded the development of an HRE, I argue that the negative implications of constructivism for traditional subjects are not true for HRE. After expanding on the other two issues, I bring in empirical evidence from an HRE textbook, in use in Turkey, to support my fourth point that what is key to a powerful HRE is political support. The article ends with a call to the HRE community to contemplate on political impediments that risk making HRE an ineffective enterprise at schools.