Geography and Identity: An Analysis of Geography Curricula in Turkey

Abstract

Although there are differences in identity construction depending on countries and periods, some courses have come to the fore in the education system in each per i od. In Turkey, the education system in general, and history, geography, citizenship and social studies courses, in particular, have instrumental importance in the construction of identity. When the literature is examined, it can be observed that there are many studies on history, social studies and citizenship lessons for identity construction. However, there is a limited number of studies on identity construction for the geography curricula. The main purpose of this research was to examine the secondary education geography curricula in Turkey in terms of identity and citizenship construction. The study was planned and carried out as a qualitative case study. Case studies often describe the exploration of a bounded system. In this research, the sample was limited to the 2005 and 2018 geography course curricula, and a detailed description was made by using “content analysis” based on the research purpose. As a result of the research, it was determined in both curricula that the national identity theme had the most expressions, and national identity was aimed to be built by presenting details about the geography of the homeland. In addition to national identity, it was determined that there were also contents related to social identity, ecological identity, universal identity, and a limited number of digital identity and religious identity themes.

Citizenship education through high school history in Turkey

“…However, the use of history as a means of constructing national identity in nation states is widespread throughout the world. During Turkey's founding period, the teaching of social studies, geography, citizenship, and history in schools was viewed as an instrument for constructing the country's national identity (Kuş, 2014(Kuş, , 2020(Kuş, , 2022Kuşand Mert, 2021;Ozan and Kuş, 2021). Since then, history teaching in Turkey has been organized in the context of Turkish national history and understandings of national unity and solidarity.…”