Turkey

Focus on Turkey

Capital: Ankara

Population: 65,000,000

Size: 301,382 sq. mi. (780,580 sq. km.)

Location: occupies Asia Minor andstraddles the Bosporus into southeasternEurope, occupying parts of two continents.

Climate: 3 zones, namely, Mediterranean(hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters),Continental (hot, dry summers and cold,harsh winters), and Black Sea (temperateand wet all year long)

Monetary Unit: Turkish lira

Urban/Rural Life: 69% urban, 31% rural

Religion: 98% Muslim;2% Eastern Orthodox,Gregorian, Jewish,and Protestant

Languages: 82% of the population speaks Turkish as a first language;17% speak Kurdish; about 1% speak Greek, Ladino,Yiddish, Arabic, Armenian,or other Caucasus languages.

Ethnicity: 80% Turkish; 10% Kurdish; small numbers of Arabs, Armenians,Jews (primarily Sephardi, with smaller elements of Ashkenazi), Donme, andothers

Government: parliamentary democracy. Universal suffrage, nominaldemocratic rights, and regular elections in a secular state, the constitutionalso gives extensive powers to the executive and military branches ofgovernment, to the extent that the state can be said to be somewhatauthoritarian.The course of Turkish history has also displayed a back-and-forth wavering between free-market capitalism with etatism (limited statesocialism with state control of certain economic functions).

Personal Snapshot

My first impressions of the United States when I came from Turkey werevery positive. For example, in Turkey, our bureaucracy is very large and veryslow: you cannot just go and get a driver’s license in an hour or sell your car

18© 2003 University of Michigan

in one day. In Turkey, these things can take a long time. I was also surprisedto see how close teachers and students sometimes are at U.S. universities.In Turkey, we students can like our teachers, but we must be a little moreformal with them. Life is faster in the United States than in Turkey, and in theUnited States, you have less time to enjoy things. But the U.S. system workswell. I also think that Americans are a little bit friendly to strangers, maybemore than the Turkish are.

Cultural Closeup

• Turkish culture is based on millenniums of successive empires and civili-zations. Although the population is primarily Muslim,Turkey differs fromother Muslim states in that the Turkish state (founded in 1923 from theAnatolian remnants of the Ottoman Empire) is secular and was organizedalong Western liberal lines. Because Turkey has been “the crossroads ofcivilization,”Turkish culture has been in continuous contact with numeroussurrounding cultures, giving it a somewhat more cosmopolitan awarenessthan many surrounding societies. Its history of mingling with Persian,Ottoman, and Arabic societies has given Turkey not only a unique culturethat has absorbed elements of all of these societies but also a nationalistculture that is distinctly Turkish.With respect to Islam, the country isheterogeneous, the Muslim population being roughly 66 percent Shia and 33 percent Sunni Muslim.

• Development within the state varies greatly. Istanbul is an internationaland cosmopolitan city, but traditional ways of life exist more or less theway they have for centuries in mountainous regions and in the easternprovinces.Turkey is both a modern developed nation and a developingnation.

• The founder of the Turkish state was Mustafa Kemal, also known asAtatürk. He is revered and respected on both cultural and nationalistlevels, because of his organization of the Turkish state as a separate entityfrom a formerly great superstate, the Ottoman Empire.The nationalistcultural, political, and linguistic body of revolutionary reforms that estab-lished the shape of the modern Turkish state are known generally asKemalism. Atatürk is so important in the nationalist ideology that thenational curriculum contains courses specific to the history of Atatürk and the founding of the Turkish state, completely separate from othermandatory history courses.

• Although the modern secular state set forth equal rights for women incontrast to previous Islamic laws, there is a continuing sociopoliticaltension with regard to gender relations, even among the urban elite, whoare generally the most supportive of the liberal state.This tension is alsoreflected in the dichotomy that exists between the rural traditional sectorand the urban and modernist elite, in which Islam, old cultural practices,and assorted anti-Kemalist political movements compete against the statusquo established by Atatürk.

Turkey 19

© 2003 University of Michigan

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A Closer Look

Policy

• Every citizen, regardless of ethnicity, is to receive equal opportunity foreducation and the country’s goal is to develop the economy and societyinto that of a modern, developed nation-state.

Teaching Style

• Classrooms are teacher-fronted.

• Cooperative learning, group work, and pair work are uncommon.Teachersmostly lecture.

Learning Style

• Students’ learning style is passive, with a focus on individual work,including board work, writing, rote exercises, projects, and homework.

Instructional Setting

• Classrooms are clean and orderly and have chalkboards.Turkish schoolsdo not have as much instructional technology as do schools in the UnitedStates.

Activities

• Turkish students may go with their classmates and teachers on field tripsto museums,concerts, industrial or scientific centers, and civic institutions.They may also participate in sports, art, and academic competitions.

Discipline and Class Management

• Mild corporal punishment is allowed, though not encouraged, for studentsup to 10 years of age. It is generally considered a bad sign if a teacherfrequently must resort to corporal punishment. Shouting and humiliationare common disciplinary methods directed toward difficult students.

Teacher-Student Relationship

• The relationship between teacher and student in Turkey is friendly but is not as informal as that in the United States. Students are compelled toshow a modicum of respect to teachers.Teachers are generally supportiveof students.

• Teachers should not flirt or fraternize with the students or curse at thestudents. Some teachers, nevertheless, treat unruly students harshly.Positive behavior for teachers includes being vocally supportive ofstudents, and encouraging questions and intelligent comments.

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© 2003 University of Michigan

Student-Student Relationship

• Student relationships are generally friendly and noncompetitive, althoughstudents at the university level are sometimes ranked against each other.

Protocol

Nonverbal Behavior

• Students often avert their eyes downward or away when they are beingchastized by the teacher or if they are unsure of their answers in thepresence of their teacher.

Forms of Address

• At all levels, a student may address the teacher as “Teacher”or with titlesequivalent to mister and missus plus last name. In high school, teachersmay address students by their first name; in the university, they use theformal “you.”

Dress

• There is no dress code for grades 1 through 8. Uniforms are required forstudents in grades 9 through 12.

• Male teachers wear jackets and leather shoes. Female teachers dresssomewhat conservatively.

• In the university, students may dress as they wish, in the same way thatthey do in the United States.

Polite/Impolite Topics and Behaviors

• It is impolite to engage in any emphatic criticism of Atatürk or Turkishhistory or to mention the Turkish/Kurdish situation within the country or the Armenian genocide that occurred in 1915. Politics may be a riskytopic at times, if one is clumsy or does not know one’s audience.

• Inquiring about Turkish history, sports (especially soccer), or family anddiscussion of daily news are acceptable.

Gift Giving

• Giving of simple gifts is common.

Problem/Solution

Problem

I have some Turkish students who often interrupt the other students in myclass.They don’t seem to be rude or overbearing by nature; they are just

22 Understanding Your International Students

© 2003 University of Michigan

eager to comment on the topic or to say the right answer. But their inter-ruptive behavior bothers some other students. How can I stop it?

Solution

Turntaking conventions vary from culture to culture, and Turkish cultureallows more overlap than does U.S. culture. Explain to the students that there is a protocol in class that works best when one person at a timespeaks. In addition, they need to know that outside the class as well ideasshould be fully expressed and considered before being added to.

Problem

I have a few Turkish students who copy each other’s homework beforeturning it in or checking it.They do this in full view of me, but I don’t thinkthat it is right. Do they realize that this is considered wrong in the UnitedStates? How might I keep them from copying?

Solution

This behavior may not be perceived the same way in Turkey as in the UnitedStates.You should explain to the students that not doing their own workinterferes with their learning and that their copying diminishes the honorand respect that the teacher has for them.

My Observations

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© 2003 University of Michigan