Education, nationalism and gender in the young Turk Era, 1908-1918

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the education of Ottoman girls during the Second Constitutional Era, and to examine the “ideal female citizen” model, which was described in the primary and secondary school textbooks. When the Second Constitution was inaugurated, Young Turks targeted to inculcate the new generations with the principles of the Constitutional Monarchy and destruct the symbols of the Hamidian Regime, for the purpose of securing the continuity of the new system. After the Balkan Wars, the success of the Balkan nations in the wars was explained with the nationalist education they received in their schools, and Turkish nationalism became the dominant educational doctrine, surpassing Ottomanism. The concepts of motherhood and womanhood were re-defined in this nationalist atmosphere, and the female citizens were given the duty of constructing the nationalist generations of the future.