An Analysis of the Idea of State in Textbooks from Ottoman Empire to the Republic in Terms of the Relation between Education and Power

Doğan N.

KURAM VE UYGULAMADA E?ITIM BILIMLERI / EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES: THEORY & PRACTICE, cilt.11, sa.4, ss.2084-2090, 2011 (Scopus, TRDizin)

Özet

The concept of state has a specific importance for Turkish-political culture. However, the influence of textbooks in constructing the state concept in Turkish culture from Ottoman to modern Turkish Republic has not been adequately researched. In this paper, the relation between the state perception in Turkish culture and textbooks from Ottoman to the early Republic is analyzed by employing the theories of Gramsci, Althusser and Foucault. As suggested by Gramsci, Althusser and Foucault, there is strong relationship between education and political power and reproduction and redistribution of knowledge. Moving from this point, present study also argues that the changes in state perception in textbooks should be analyzed in terms of sociological changes in the late Ottoman and the early Republican period. While justice (adalet) has been an important component of Turkish-Islamic political culture, sultan was the key element of the administration of law. Sultan was also a determining concept of Ottoman political culture and responsible for administering justice. As the new emerging elites attempted to change traditional state perception after the Tanzimat, the textbooks written under the rule of Abdulhamit II and Union and Progress Party (İttihat ve Terakki Partisi) reflect the political and social change of the Empire. As state gained further prominence in the early republican period, another concept entered into the Turkish political discourse: democracy. It is possible to trace such changes in textbooks.