Abstract

The purposes of this study were to identify the major principles of the national ideology of Turkey which the leadership sought to establish and perpetuate after gaining independence; and, to ascertain, through content analysis, the degree to which these values were reflected in the content of the three secondary history textbooks published in 1929, 1950, and 1986 respectively. A review of the literature revealed the national ideology of Turkey was articulated through the six principles of Kemalism: nationalism, secularism, etatism, populism, westernism, and revolutionism. The investigator hypothesized that the textbooks would not reflect significantly different levels of emphasis on each of the elements of the national ideology. A four point continuum was used to distinguish varying degrees of emphasis. Before testing the hypothesis by analysis of variance, the values attributed for the degree of emphasis on each category (Kemalist principle) in each textbook were averaged. These means were the data for the analysis of variance used to determine whether category means were significantly different from one another.

The hypothesis that the textbooks would not reflect significantly different emphasis on each of the Kemalist principles was confirmed in 12 of the 18 cases. There were six cases in which differences among category means were significant (p $<$.05). The content analysis revealed that although individual categories received different emphasis, general support of Kemalist principles prevailed in the textbooks in all periods. The overall findings supported theories of social change in transition societies with regard to the important role of tradition in the modernizing process, the general trend of nations to evolve toward urban-industrial societies, and the tendency of politics to serve as the principal force in shaping transition states. The data was interpreted to provide a deeper understanding of the processes by which one developing nation sought to modernize, and to understand the manner in which secondary history textbooks perpetuate a national ideology.