Description | Speaker: Asli Cansunar, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Washington. Most new countries that break away from a major empire or gain independence from a colonial power grapple with the challenge of creating new state-sponsored national attachments and loyalties under the banner of a shared identity. And, usually, it is the state that forms the nation, not vice versa. Indeed, history has witnessed a multitude of top-down and state-initiated campaigns to forge a nation from disparate groups through time and space. Turkey is no exception. With the Republic of Turkey's proclamation in 1923, the new regime attempted to change from the multiethnic and Islamist Ottoman Empire's ruins to a thoroughly modern and secular nation-state. Following most other regimes which sought to create loyal subjects through a comprehensive nation-building program, the new government prioritized primary and popular education to win the hearts and minds of the masses and to indoctrinate them into its ideology. This talk will focus on the spatial distribution of education facilities in the early republican period, and its long-term effects on sub-national politics in Turkey. |
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