“The Narrative of Religion” in the High School Textbooks of the Early Republican Period in Turkey

Abstract

Middle of the 20th century, Turkish Republic was enterednation-construction process. It rebuilt its education system in order tocreate a new and modern society. Within this scope, one of the maingoals of history education was to form a ``national identity{''} andcreate a ``sense of belonging based on ethnicity and language{''}, aswas that of the language education. Most important thing about thisidentification process is to pass secular identityin spite oftraditional religious identity. For secular identity construct religiousthought were discussed. This study dealt with the nature of ``religiousdebates{''} observed in Turk Tarihi'nin Ana Hadari Methal Kismi(Prolegomena to an Outline of Turkish History) and Tarih I-TV (HistoryI-TV) textbooks, which were among the influential history educationinstruments of that period, and the reasons for such debates. To thisend, the above-mentioned high school history textbooks were subjected todocument analysis and discourse analysis. The construction ofevaluations made on the phenomenon of religion and the Islam in therelevant textbooks was focused on besides the intellectualinfrastructure reflected by this organization. In this context, thesuitableness of inclusion of religious debates in the high schoolhistory textbooks in terms of history education was discussed. As aresult it was observedthat in spite of religious thought, positivist,naturalist, Darwinist etc. Thougt were used to shed rekigious thought.And was wanted from students to have task awareness by politicalreaction and using religion for politic speech. It was aimed to buildsecular social structure identity.