A perspective on the 1970s through bourdieu's lens: A case of field struggle in literature education

This thesis focuses on the 1976 literature curriculum and the textbooks written by Mehmet Kaplan for it. Literature curricula and textbooks from the Tanzimat period to the Republic and into the 1970s are analyzed in terms of objectives, methods, course content, author-work selection, and the level of teacher autonomy to understand changing approaches to literature education. The analysis is supported by discussions in literary journals that influenced these shifts. To explore the link between ideology and literature education, Bourdieu's concepts—dominant taste, symbolic violence, field, pedagogical authority, and pedagogical work—are used. These concepts reveal that the 1970s marked a critical point in literature education, triggering a field struggle within the dominant taste. This struggle is examined through academic publications, parliamentary debates, and journal articles. To deepen the analysis, the 1976 curriculum and Kaplan's textbooks are reviewed through critiques by institutions, journals, and writers. The findings show that, as in other areas, the Nationalist Front Government (Milliyetçi Cephe Hükümeti) aimed to shift the dominant Kemalist taste in literature education toward a nationalist-conservative one. It is concluded that the Aydınlar Ocağı, of which Kaplan was a member, implemented its Turkish-Islamic synthesis in the textbooks through ideology, method, author-work selection, and the reinterpretation of key concepts.