Turkish textbooks have faced criticism for their negative depiction of Christians — particularly Greeks and Armenians — lack of depiction or explicit denial of Ottoman-era massacres and genocides, denial of the existence of the Kurdish people, as well as understating and condoning Ottoman-era slavery. According to a study by Abdulkerim Şen, human rights education in Turkey subscribes to the 'escapist model'; Şen explains that Turkish textbooks either deliberately avoid human rights issues, struggles, campaigns, and activists altogether, or window-dress human rights issues by presenting de-contextualised narratives. Şen further states that the curriculum fails in respect of critically examining on discrepancies about claims made in Turkish textbooks vis-à-vis realities of human rights; and has scope to improve the curriculum encouraging learners to explore transformative powers of Human Rights Education.
Since the early twentieth century, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey attempted to modernize and secularize its public life and education, various Turkish government dispensations, going back to Founding of the Turkish Republic had been promoting the Islamization of Turkish education in the name of promoting national unity; After Erdoğan came to power, the process of radicalizing Islamism in Turkish education and compromising on science education accelerated further.Yanarocak, Hay Eytan Cohen, 'The Erdoğan Revolution in the
Turkish Curriculum Textbooks' (March 2021) Editor:David M. Byer, Series Impact Se Reports, Series Editor, Eldad J. Pardo, Website Website: www.impact-se.org, Retrieved January 31, 2022.
According to Fatma Müge Göçek, in Turkey, the Education Ministry controlled the entire system ranging from textbooks, teacher training, course content, and even the questions asked at graduation examinations. One outcome of this policy was the excessive centralization of knowledge production. Moreover, most textbooks were penned by retired officers at the expense of other scholars who lacked the kinds of connections the ex-officers had. Göçek says that popular public intellectuals participated in the construction of this nationalistic presentation alongside scholars. The state's inclusion of non-academic groups into discussions on how to write history textbooks further popularized and mythified Turkish history. Göçek states that such nationalist interference in the production of knowledge obviously colored and affected all subsequent research. The proofs of Turkish history textbooks were also continually reviewed with a similar intention, one memoir writer noted, “to correct the mistakes...of many of the history books published in our country... [that] had either consciously or unknowingly minimized the role of Turks in world history.” Göçek explains that as a consequence, instead of promoting critical thinking, the information contained in the textbooks ended up regurgitating the official Turkish nationalist rhetoric.
Islamisation of education and creationism
During the one-party period of the Republic of Turkey, textbook coverage was aggressively secular. Following the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, the military leadership and subsequent governments promoted Islamism to promote national unity, which eventually included translation and distribution of materials from the US Institute for Creation Research and creationist high-school textbooks. A survey published in 2008 found that about 25% of people in Turkey accepted evolution as an explanation for how life came to exist. As of 2009, creationism had become the government's official position on origins.
In 2009, the Turkish government agency Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), publisher of the popular Turkish science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology), was accused of stripping a cover story about the life and work of Charles Darwin from the March 2009 issue of the Council's publication just before it went to press. The planned portrait of Darwin for the magazine's cover was replaced and the editor of the magazine, Çiğdem Atakuman, claims that she was removed from her post. Most of the Turkish population expressed support for the censorship. In 2012, it was found that the government's internet content filter, designed to prevent the public having access to pornographic websites, also blocked the words 'evolution' and 'Darwin' on one mode of the filter.
Ateizm Derneği (Association of Atheism of Turkey) evaluated a course textbook called Din Kültürü ve Ahlâk Bilgisi dersi kitabında (Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge) which was mandated as a part of the syllabus from 9th grade until graduation since 2014. The Association of Atheism believes that the mandatory course on Islamic education encourages students to otherize non-Muslims and divide Turkish society on religious lines.
In 2017, Turkey announced plans to end the teaching of evolution in Turkish schools, with the chairman of the Board of Education, Alpaslan Durmuş, claiming it was a complicated and "controversial" topic for students. Other changes introduced the teaching of 'Jihad' as a part of loving the nation in religious schools known as Imam Hatip schools as part of vocational education, and in general secondary schools as optional subject. Activist Dr. Aysel Madra of 'Turkey's Education Reform Initiative' says that it will only confuse the students and finds it odd to claim that students can understand 'Jihad' but not evolution; On the other hand, Turkey's Minister of Education Ismet Yilmaz claimed that while theory of evolution is above level of school students and can be taught at university levels and information on mutation, modification and adaptation is still explained in biology textbooks, without referring to evolution itself.
Debate and protests Since 2017, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's right-wing government changed school textbooks to introduce Jihad and terminate teaching of evolution from school textbooks; political parties and even teachers' unions got divided over newly introduced changes in textbooks. Turkish MP Bülent Tezcan of the opposition party Republican People's Party (CHP) and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused each other. While Erdoğan claimed of creating pious generation, Tezcan doubted the changes as "embedding jihadist values in education, Erdoğan government is attempting to plague the brains of little Turkish children, with the similar understanding that transforms the Middle East into a bloodbath". The teachers unions were also divided in the 'teaching of Jihad' debate; according to Turkey's progressive teachers' union EĞİTİM SEN's leader Feray Aydoğan, when jihad's primary meaning is 'religious war' then there is no point in explaining second and third meanings of the contested term; where as more conservative rival union blamed critics of using anti-Islamic arguments. Opponents of Erdoğan government's new education policy have blamed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for shifting the secular foundations of the Turkish republic towards Islamic and conservative values.
Opponents of Erdoğan's new education policy carried out two sizable protests to say No to an outdated curriculum that bans science in the 21st Century; while hashtags such as #NoToSexistCurriculum, #SayNoToNonScientificCurriculum and #DefendSecularEducation trended on social media in Turkey.
Coverage of History According to Eray Alaca, if number of universities in Turkey are taken into account research thesis on theses on history textbooks in Turkey between studied period of 1989 and 2017 comes out to be too small, in that too most papers are master level where as number of doctoral theses on the topic are too meager. Alaca says that while most of postgraduate papers discuss history textbooks in Turkey, nevertheless considerable number of papers focus on how the Turkish/Ottoman discourse is handled in textbooks foreign countries namely erstwhile countries which were colonized under Ottoman rules previously. Alaca says that most thesis examine history textbooks in uncritical romanticized narrow point of views.
Coverage of slavery
According to Avarogullari Ayten and Muhammet, slavery in Turkish and Islamic history is mostly omitted or condoned in Turkish school textbooks. Contents in the history and social studies school textbooks in Turkey contain substantial non inclusion and misrepresentations related to pre modern slavery in Turkey and Islam.
Avarogullaris sees some patterns in the way slavery is dealt with in Turkish school textbooks. First, slavery as an issue that occurred mainly in the West; While institutionalized western slavery are rightly criticized in Turkish textbooks. But avoids any mention of existence of slaves in the Islamic world and how Muslims got their own slaves, especially in the Ottoman past of Turks and their actual treatment on the ground. Such omission creates an impression that there was no slavery in Turkish past, or slaves in Turkish history were very happy.
While textbooks are quick in criticizing west for its part in slavery but fail to give due credit to western societies for their initiative in the abolition of slavery. Actual fact that it was proactive British diplomatic pressure in nineteenth century and Ottoman rulers need to maintain its positive image led to eventual gradual abolishing of slavery from Ottoman Empire. Rather Turkish textbooks paint incorrect picture that it was Islam which banned slavery, factually Islam never banned slavery rather permitted capturing and trading of slaves continued rather with bit of encouragement for better treatment to slaves and encouragement to manumission but that does not amount to complete abolition of slavery, but Turkish textbooks tell the students otherwise.
Turkish textbooks cherry-pick in while depicting wherever and whenever Turks were taken into slavery but go silent on own Turkish past which was proactively participated in enslavement and trade of slaves.
While Turkish textbooks take note of role of European Human Rights Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights in abolishing slavery but miss on human elements which strived for the goal, which happened to be some proactive westerners.
Turkish textbooks create perception that only African black people were enslaved but factually largest number of slaves traded and used in premodern Turkey were Russians than Africans since Ottomans had frequent wars with Russians were taken as war prisoners whereas they had to pay to buy African slaves from traders still prices for White slaves were more and Women slaves were more than male slaves, male slaves were most frequently castrated.
According to Sak (1992, p. 218) a report giving details of ethnic origin of slaves used in Turkey based on court records of six provinces of Ottoman Empire, in percentage Russian 20.12%, Black 11.47%, Georgian 8.48%, Persian 4.26%, Hungarian 2.29%, Cherkes 1.85%, Abyssinian 1.67%, Romanian (Eflaki and Bogdani in the original text) 1.54%, Polish 1.5%, Muscovite 1.06%, Serfi (?) 0.62%, Croat 0.52%, Abkhazian 0.4%, European (Efrenci in the original text) 0.35%, Austrian 0.31%, Armenian 0.21%, Greek 0.18%, Tuti (?) 0.13%, Albanian 0.04%, Barbary 0.04%, Bosnian 0.04%, Frank 0.04%, Morean 0.04%, Bulgarian 0.08%, Indian 0.08%, Wallach 0.08%