Abstract
<p style="text-align:justify">The primary purpose of this article is to analyze how the origin of the Cold War is represented in Turkish history textbooks for general secondary school education for the twelfth grade. The author examined three history textbooks, which are only approved by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) for teaching the course of Contemporary Turkish and World History. This research applied content analysis, including narratives and visual interpretation of the origins of the Cold War, and also the events regarding the emergence of Soviet Bloc and Western Bloc in high school history textbooks in Turkey. Findings indicate that treatments of the origin of the Cold War in Turkish history textbooks are remarkably similar in many ways. The traditional approach of the origin of the Cold War, which depicts the Soviet Union as an aggressive power whose primary purpose was to expand Communism to the world, constitutes the dominant narrative in Turkish history textbooks. The representation of the United States is very positive. All textbooks underline that the United States played a crucial role in solving many problems in many different parts of the world to prevent the expansion of Communism.</p>
Highlights
The British Marxist historian Hobsbawm (1996) described the twentieth century as the Age of Extremes because, in that century, humanity faced many dramatic events that affected the lives of millions of people deeply at different points
Findings indicate that treatments of the origin of the Cold War in Turkish history textbooks are remarkably similar in many ways
History textbooks especially contain these visuals, such as political caricatures, which have a visual and a textual message that they want to impart to students
Summary
The British Marxist historian Hobsbawm (1996) described the twentieth century as the Age of Extremes because, in that century, humanity faced many dramatic events that affected the lives of millions of people deeply at different points. In the first half of the century, humanity witnessed two world wars, and each of them changed the world dramatically. After these two great wars, the new period called the “Cold War” started in 1945. Some historians claim that it can be dated from 1946 in which Winston Churchill introduced the phrase “Iron Curtain” to describe the struggle between Western powers and the Soviet Union over the world. Since it has become synonymous with the ideological rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. It is imperative to understand the underlying factors that contributed to its formation
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