Militarisation of citizenship education curriculum in Turkey

Abstract

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.

The Inclusion of Social Issues in the Curricula Adopted at the Elementary Education Level in Turkey

“…According to the findings of the research, unlike the curricula of the countries with which they were compared, curricula being used in Saudi Arabia do not include universal values such as peace, human rights and multi-culturalism. Sen (2018), in his research, points out to an important phenomena regarding the citizenship education curriculum in which democratic life practices are taught most extensively. In his research, he examined changes and the role of international organizations in these changes after 1995 in citizenship education.…”

Hizmet Öncesi Öğretmen Eğitiminde Topluma Hizmet Uygulamaları ve Aktif Vatandaşlık

“…Bu sebeple, Türkiye'de vatandaşlık eğitiminin, hâlen sıkı bir şekilde geleneksel vatandaşlık kavramını temel aldığı eleştirilmekte ve bireylere çağın gerektirdiği vatandaşlık bilgisi ve becerilerini kazandırmak üzere aktif vatandaşlık kavramının gelişmesi için mevcut koşul ve olanakların yeterli olmadığı vurgulanmaktadır (Keser ve diğerleri, 2011). Bunun bir sonucu olarak, alanyazındaki birçok araştırmadan elde edilen bulgular vatandaşlık eğitiminde öğretim programları ve ders kitapları ile ilgili problemler olduğunu ortaya koymakta (örn., Bıçak ve Ereş, 2018;Caymaz, 2008;Çayır, 2009Çayır ve Bağlı, 2011;Çayır ve Gürkaynak, 2008;Ersoy, Balbağ ve Gündoğan-Bayır, 2017;İnce, 2012;Karakuş-Özdemirci, Aksoy ve Ok, 2020;Karaman-Kepenekci, 2005;Memişoğlu, 2014;Merey, Karatekin ve Kuş, 2012;Sen, 2019;Sen ve Starkey, S. Akın / Pamukkale Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, XX, SS-SS, 2021 4 2017; Som ve Karataş, 2015;Şen, 2019); öğretmenlerin aktif vatandaşlıkla ilgili sınırlı bilgi, beceri, tutum ve algıya sahip olduğunu ve yeterli pedagojik bilgilerinin olmadığını belirtmekte (örn., Çayır ve Bağlı, 2011;Ersoy, 2014a;Eryılmaz, Bursa ve Ersoy, 2018;Kuş ve Aksu, 2017;Memişoğlu, 2014;Öztürk, Malkoç ve Ersoy, 2016); benzer şekilde farklı eğitim kademelerindeki öğrencilerin de aktif vatandaşlıkla ilgili yeterli bilgi, beceri, tutum ya da algı geliştiremediğini tartışmaktadır (örn., Bağlı, 2013;Baloğlu-Uğurlu, 2013;Çayır ve Bağlı, 2011;Ersoy, 2014a;Eryılmaz ve diğerleri, 2018).…”

‘Powerful’ human rights education’s curriculum problems

“…In the conflictual context of Cyprus, human rights discourses counterproductively served to strengthen the negative representation of the other, the Turkish, instead of promoting intercultural dialogue (Zembylas, Charalambous, Charalambous, & Lesta, 2016). In the ideologically-polarised context of Turkey, human rights discourses were weaponised by the military-controlled authorities against the dissident Islamist and Kurdish groups in the 1990s (Sen, 2019). These cases demonstrate the vitality of political power for a Human Rights course, I accessed two textbooks in use (Işıklı, 2017;Tüzün, 2018) via the official textbook-sharing platform .…”

“…There is not convincing evidence to arrive at a conclusion that formal education institutions effectively equip learners with human rights knowledge and competencies. Rather, the implementations are patchy and piecemeal ranging from the rhetorical mention of human rights in policy documents to the introduction of HRE curricula which contain statist, nationalist and even militarist perspectives that may be found contrary to human rights principles (Cardenas, 2005;Sen, 2019;Sen & Starkey, 2017).…”