Turkey's Neighbors in Early Republican Period in Geography Textbooks

Abstract

The aim of this study is to present the approaches related to neighboring countries in establishment years of Turkish republic through geography textbooks. It was examined that Geography textbooks written for secondary education institutions in that period by means of document analysis from qualitative research designs. The method of content analysis was used for the analysis. The answers to the following questions were searched: (1) With which categorical features was Turkey's neighbors defined in the geography textbooks of the early republican period? (2) Which basic tendencies does the neighboring country perception of the Republic of Turkey contain? Among these findings; the neighboring republic of Turkey is under the influence of global centers of power as it is today. Trade relations with the neighboring republic of Turkey are not sufficiently developed. The new Republic of Turkey is not satisfied with the new political boundaries, including Mosul primarily determined by the First World War. The problems of Turkish communities left behind by the Ottomans are included in the textbooks. As a result, the findings were interpreted by considering the relevant literature. It has been able to obtain important information about Turkey's neighbors through textbooks from the official state resources of the early republican period thanks to this study.

Analysis of geography textbook activities in the context of units and critical thinking skills

“…Against this background, this study aimed to examine the activities in the secondary education geography textbooks taught at the national level in Turkey in the context of critical thinking skills and units. The literature includes studies examining geography textbooks from different perspectives (Jo & Bednarz, 2009, Geçit & Yarar, 2013Sağdıç & İnce, 2020;Sağdıç & Özkan, 2018;Solmaz et al, 2011;Maude & Caldis, 2019;Sezer & Şanlı, 2017). However, a limited number of studies have so for analysed the content of textbooks in the context of thinking skills (Huynh & Sharpe, 2013;Krause et al, 2022aKrause et al, , 2022bJo & Bednarz, 2011;Mishra, 2015;Yang, 2013;Yang et al, 2015;Xiang et al, 2022).…”