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Turkey: Silencing Ethnic Inequalities Under a Carpet of Nationalism Shifting Between Secular and Religious Poles

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Abstract

This article offers a systematic review of educational and sociological research in Turkey on the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality between 1980 and 2017. A major challenge regarding this research topic is that ethnic differences were a taboo topic in Turkey until recently, so systematic information on ethnic differences is lacking. Still, three research traditions could be distinguished, namely research that focuses on (1) regional differences, (2) language differences and (3) religious differences. The existing studies predominantly embrace a deficit perspective and quantitative research methods and a more positivistic approach to social sciences. Currently, alarming developments are visible: improvement in minority language rights in education is halted and the violent armed conflicts have started again. Finally, the recent migration developments, with the influx of three million Syrians, remain largely out of the scope of the literature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Turkey, as it will be explained in details throughout the chapter, it is not possible to find official statistics about the size of different ethnic and religious minorities. The population census does not ask questions about ethnicity, religion or denomination.

  2. 2.

    Turkish Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS), conducted every 5 years by the Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, is a nationally representative survey and it is one of the largest datasets available to study social disparities in educational outcomes, although the main focus of this survey is on reproductive health. Moreover, it does not directly ask ethnicity, however questions regarding language spoken at home and the language of the survey can be used to determine linguistic minorities. More information about these surveys can be found in their reports: http://www.hips.hacettepe.edu.tr/eng/population_survey.shtml.

  3. 3.

    Sunnism is the dominant denomination of Islam endorsed by the majority of the Turkish population. Alevism is a more liberal and left-leaning orientation of Islam endorsed by a minority of the Turkish Population. They are officially considered not as a denomination of Islam but rather as a folkloric tradition in Turkey. However, it should also be noted that no official statistics are kept regarding the size of different groups. The most common estimate of Alevis is around 15%, with a range from 3% (self-identification) to 19% (religiously significant figures measured) (Carkoglu 2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Identity and Intergroup Relations, School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Gülseli Baysu

  2. Laboratory for Education and Society, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Orhan Agirdag

  3. Department of Educational Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Orhan Agirdag

Authors
  1. Gülseli Baysu
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  2. Orhan Agirdag
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Correspondence to Gülseli Baysu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Peter A. J. Stevens

  2. Department of Sociology, The University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    A. Gary Dworkin

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Baysu, G., Agirdag, O. (2019). Turkey: Silencing Ethnic Inequalities Under a Carpet of Nationalism Shifting Between Secular and Religious Poles. In: Stevens, P.A.J., Dworkin, A.G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94724-2_25

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