Abstract
Turkey has adopted a new trend regarding English-medium education in recent decades. The development of capitalism has also affected Turkey and the Turkish education system. The Turkish Council of Higher Education has aspired to make higher education in Turkey more global and international. Therefore, the British Council has prepared a report to show the situation of English in Turkey. It has been found that Turkey needs serious ameliorations in many ways in the sphere of English-medium instruction. The report findings show that Turkey can develop economically more if it can endorse English-based education. The popularity of neoliberalism has shown its effects in Turkish higher education. Therefore, English has been prioritized as a result of neoliberalism. In the future, the situation of English can be evaluated by teachers, scholars, students, policymakers, and international organizations. The findings also show that The Turkish Council of Higher Education believes that the British Council has contributed to the development of English in Turkey following neoliberal policies.
Highlights
Neoliberal practices and policies aim to commodify any entity by minimizing the effect of the public and governmental intervention (Klees, 2008) and by mainly using and even expanding the principles of laissez-faire economic movement and the free market (Olssen & Peters, 2005) whose origins date back to 19th century and which led neoliberalism to emerge in the 1970s with new definitions by using democracy and populism as an effective tool (Giroux, 2002; Harvey, 2007; Guardino, 2018)
This study will focus on only lingua nullius (Kayman, 2009; Phillipson, 2018) since British Council aims to show that English should be an indispensable part of Turkish universities if Turkey intends to be integral to internationalization and economic globalization, which indicates the neoliberal practices of the British Council (Taquini, Finardi, & Amorim, 2017)
This study showed the statistical distribution of languages in Turkey and analyzed the speech made by the head of the Turkish Council of Higher Education as well as the 132-page report prepared by the British Council
Summary
Neoliberal practices and policies aim to commodify any entity by minimizing the effect of the public and governmental intervention (Klees, 2008) and by mainly using and even expanding the principles of laissez-faire economic movement and the free market (Olssen & Peters, 2005) whose origins date back to 19th century and which led neoliberalism to emerge in the 1970s with new definitions by using democracy and populism as an effective tool (Giroux, 2002; Harvey, 2007; Guardino, 2018). The neoliberal aim of British Council along with the US dates back to early 20th century (Phillipson, 2008) because the presidents and the authorities of these countries have been insistently and visibly developing discourses and strategies to show that English is the only global language and solution to be economically strong on a global scale (Pennycook, 2017; Block & Gray, 2016; Shin, 2016; Price, 2014; Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 2010; Olssen & Peters, 2005) Turkish scholars (Doğançay-Aktuna & Kiziltepe, 2005; Kirkgoz, 2005; 2009) have strictly followed and largely supported these neoliberal practices of lingua nullius by emphasizing that Turkish schools and universities need to develop more efficient policies to promote English Medium Education
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
