turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

- The obstacles on being objective and to what extent human beings
be objective
- The differences between recent Turkish and Greek Education
systems
- Learner-centered education: students defining their scope of
education themselves, choosing what source to use what to learn
and how to interpret
- Civic history: people defining their own histories
PROPOSALS FROM THE WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS
- Turks and Greeks writing history books together
- Common perception of the Ottoman period, common Balkan
textbook
- Students and academics from the two countries being involved in
exchange programs to help common understanding
- Assistance from foreign experts in the formation of textbooks
- Greek teachers coming to Turkey to see the educational process and
the vice versa.
- Training of teachers on both countries: teaching of ‘How to teach?’
- More active NGOs concerning the history textbooks and raise
consciousness on the effect of history books in formation of
stereotypes
- The usage of more than one source in history classes to enable
learners to look at the issue from different perspectives.
- Re-scanning of history books to eliminate the existing prejudices
and negative attitudes towards the ‘Other’ nation (as in the project
of Turkish History Foundation)
“On the second day of the discussions, we had two presentations related to
issue: Panagiotis Kontolemos analyzed the history textbooks in Greece since
1980, dividing the time from 1980 to today into three periods due to the
content and attitude of Greek history textbooks. The reason why he started
analyzing the textbooks from 1980’s is that before 80’s there was a dictatorship
in Greece and it would not be so efficient to compare the textbooks written in
this period with the ones written in modern democratic Greece.”
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
ST period in Greek history textbooks starts in 1980 till 1987. First historical
1 myth used in this period was the personification of the nation; that the
whole nation is characterized as a single person for example ‘the Turk’. A
second myth from third period is ‘We’ opposed to ‘the Others’- formation of
an understanding and distinction of ‘we’ and ‘them’. There were the military,
moral and cultural sections for this myth.
An example from the military section: “Those were the ganisters, the worriers
that scatter fear with their inhuman cruelty” (Diamandopoulou- Kiriazopoulou,
Greek History of the Modern Times, 1986, sixth grade-primary school, page
324).
Another example is from the moral section “The Greeks, liberal people as they
were, were never to be submitted nor doomed to the slave’s fate” (ibid 32).
An example from the cultural section is as follows “In the dark period of the
first years after the conquest, the rest of the nation appeared to be doomed
in isolation by a culturally inferior ruler” (ibid 47).
A third myth from this first period in Greek history textbooks is named as the
‘Scapegoat’-to explain better, for all the unpleasant things happening, the
‘Other’ nation was blamed. An example is “In its 400 years of slavery, Greece
remained isolated, away from the civilized world” (ibid 183).
As a general evaluation of the first period it can be said that there were highly
nationalist attitudes in the textbooks, many stereotypes and comparisons on
national scales, mentioning of only the victories.
2
ND period in Greek history textbooks starts with the Davos Agreement in
1988, which also decided upon the content of Turkish and Greek textbooks.
There were two main myths employed in this period as the ‘inferiority of the
Other’ and the ‘superiority of the nation’. An example to the ‘inferiority of the
Other is “He therefore had in front of him the country of ‘faithless people’
something very ‘appetizing for the gazides adventurers that used to thicken
the classes of the new nation” (ibid 297). An example for the superiority of
the nation is “The most grievous fate of all is that of the unarmed Greeks
of Asia Minor that had lived up there for more than 2,5 thousand years as
the guards of a great civilization”. In this period the books were improving
with the impact of Davos Agreement especially in higher levels of education.
However still many books were considering the period under Ottoman rule as
Rebuilding Communication
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