Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 2025 (Scopus)
This paper examines Circassian narratives on education in Turkey between 1940 and 1990, based on in-depth interviews with activists. At the classroom level, Circassian students employed varying strategies, from concealing their identity to resisting the nationalist order of education. The curricular level reflected a dual process of erasure and stigmatization–ranging from the absence of Circassians to the vilification of a historical figure, Çerkes Ethem. The linguistic level concerned learning Turkish and unlearning the Circassian dialects, contributing to a language shift and gradual endangerment. The narratives reveal the interaction of multiple actors, driven by diverse motivations, who collectively contributed to the low status attributed to Circassian dialects and identity. This historical background, as the article explores, continues to shape contemporary challenges, as evidenced in the discussion of recent educational reforms, which highlights the deeply entrenched relationships between Turkish nationalism and education as the primary obstacle to multiculturalist educational policies in Turkey.