Fights over Human Rights: A Strange Story of Citizenship and Democracy Education

Abstract

In Turkey, some important steps have been taken to incorporate the notion and the teaching of human rights and freedom into the educational system. With the wave raised by the United Nations declaration of the Decade for Human Rights Education for the 1995–2004 period and also the curriculum studies conducted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in this context, the efforts to teach human rights, especially in the primary schools, gained momentum at the end of the 1990s in Turkey. Therefore, a national committee was formed and a national action plan was prepared to teach human rights issues across the country. The curriculum has since been modified. The course on citizenship and human rights became part of the educational system in 1998 as a required course in primary schools. Since 1999, another course titled Democracy and Human Rights Education has been taught in high schools as an elective course. However, this situation changed in 2005. Although the nature and importance of human rights and democracy has been frequently emphasized by the leaders and the cadre of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) has removed the Citizenship and Human Rights Education course from the primary school curriculum and determined that the subjects and themes related to human rights and freedoms would be taught in other courses.