Turkish Textbooks: Turning History on Its Head
by Uzay Bulut • May 30, 2024 at 5:00 am
Islamists in Turkey do not teach schoolchildren that Jews have been indigenous to Israel for nearly 4000 years -- since the Bronze Age -- and that the reestablishment of Israel in 1948 was actually an anti-colonialist step.
Meanwhile, Turkish government authorities have targeted their own indigenous peoples of Anatolia, namely the Pontic Greeks and Armenians. In the twentieth century, Ottoman Turkey largely exterminated these peoples through a genocide.
The government of Turkey, however, refers to the genocide as the "unfounded claims" of Greeks and Armenians. The titles in the Turkish history textbooks were previously called the "Pontus Issue" and the "Armenian Question". They are now changed to the "Unfounded Pontus Claims" and the "Unfounded Armenian Claims".
"[T]his is not a [country ruled by the] state of law..." — Eren Keskin, Lawyer, Co-Chairman Human Rights Association (IHD).
The Turkish government is also in denial about the history of the land of Turkey. Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians are indigenous peoples of the land, just as Jews are indigenous to Israel. Muslim Turks from Central Asia arrived in the Armenian highlands and Anatoli, which was the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire at the time, only during the 11th century. Through military invasions, Muslim Turks seized the towns and cities where indigenous Christians had lived for centuries. Ottoman Turks finally invaded Constantinople (today's Istanbul) in the fifteenth century, bringing the destruction of the Byzantine Empire. After that, abuses against Christian religious and cultural heritage became widespread.
The new Turkish textbooks also claim Greek and Cypriot waters in the Aegean Sea as belonging to Turkey. Through a doctrine that the government of Turkey calls "the Blue Homeland", they aim to seize Greek islands and maritime space in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.
Sadly, these textbooks will sow more hatred in Turkish children against Jews, Greeks, Christians, Armenians, Greek Cypriots and the State of Israel -- all based on misinformation, willful distortion, and historic revisionism.
Turkey's Islamist government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing to further indoctrinate Turkish schoolchildren in propaganda regarding Israel, Greeks, Armenians, Cyprus and other issues of history and geography.
New content, named "Turkey's Century Education Model", was added to this year's curriculum and only recently made available for public opinion by the Ministry of National Education.
Additions were made, among other studies, to the "History of the Revolution of Turkish Republic and Kemalism", and geography, regarding Israel, Greeks, Armenians, Cyprus and others.
Turkish history textbooks will include more content on "Palestine", Israel and Zionism. The misleading chapter on the subject matter, which already existed, has now been extended even further.
