Discrimination

Discrimination
Based on Colour, Ethnic Origin, Language, Religion and Belief
in Turkey’s Education System
Introduction
Ever since the founding of the Republic of Turkey,
the education system has been one of the
main vehicles for reinforcing the ideology of the
nation-state. With the introduction of the Law on
the Unification of Education [Tevhid-i Tedrisat
Kanunu], 1 which brought an end to the relatively
pluralistic education system of the Ottoman Empire
and sought to create a uniform society under
the guise of the ‘unification’ of education, the education
system was fully centralised without taking
into account the size of the country and its population
or its demographic diversity. All policies
related to education have been drawn up centrally
in Ankara in a non-participatory way and without
consultation with the communities of various
identities that exist in the country.
The aim of education as laid out in the constitution
and legislation on education has always
contained ideological references, with an allegiance
to Atatürk and Turkish nationalism and the
espousal of patriotism taking precedence over students’
pedagogical development and their best interests.
This education system, which throughout
the Republican period sought to encourage young
people to embrace this ideology, has since 2010
become a vehicle for raising a ‘pious’ and nationalistic
youth. It has been observed that ideological
approaches continue to determine decisions
about regulations related to the education system
rather than priority being placed on students’ best
interests.
As with many other aspects of the public
sphere, only Sunni Muslim Turks have been taken
into account when determining policies related to
the education system; other identities are either
1 Law No. 430, ratification date: 3 March 1924.
ignored or, when they are included in the field of
education, treated as a marginalized ‘other’. Unfortunately,
within this education system, which
is shaped by the ideological aims described above,
the different groups that live in Anatolia are prevented
from learning their mother tongues and
from receiving education in their mother tongues;
in addition, a compulsory Religious Culture and
Morals (RCaM) course is imposed even on children
from non-Sunni Muslim groups, and the curriculum
and textbooks either ignore the different
identities of people living in the country or depict
communities such as Armenians and Greeks
as enemies of the country. Minority schools, the
existence of which was secured by the Treaty of
Lausanne, have suffered a great deal of unfair and
discriminatory treatment throughout the history
of the Republic. Problems related to access to
education for disadvantaged groups have been
ignored for many years, and disparities in this regard
in different regions of the country have not
been resolved.
While some positive steps have been taken in
recent years towards resolving these problems in
the field of education, fundamental and lasting reforms
to remove all inequalities in the education
system based on colour, ethnic origin, language,
religion and belief have not yet been implemented.
Many issues are still awaiting a solution, such
as the right to learn one’s mother tongue and to
receive education in one’s mother tongue, respect
for freedom of religion and conscience, securing
access to education and equal opportunities, and
the protection of students who are subject to harassment
and other discriminatory treatment. For
the most part, groups other than Muslim Turks
still do not feature in the curriculum and textbooks,
and when they do they are referred to in
a negative way. The existing legislation offers no
effective legal or administrative procedures for
fighting discrimination in the education system,
and the mechanisms that do exist are not applied
effectively.
In 2012, a host of new issues arose alongside
the introduction of the education system known as