The degree of master of science political science and international relations

The purpose of this study to examine the compulsory education systems which had been built on fundamentals of different ideologies in Turkey. Sustainability of a political system depends on the production of the ideology and embracement of the social bases. Without any doubt, the strongest tool to make this adoption of idea to happen is education. The mandatory education started by the Ottoman Empire while The Tanzimat Reform Era was shaped by the effect of political conflicts and polarizations. While the attempts of trying to start secular educational establishments, the educational establishments that teaches with the Islamic values such as madrassahs, kept their existence too. With the proclamation of the Republic, like on many other fields, fundamental changes were made. Educational activities got collected under one roof and used as an affective tool while the nation-building process. While building a nation from a multi-ethnical structure, the common mentality of language, culture and history had been tried to built by using education. While this process, political powers tried change the educational policies due to their own ideologies and made legal regulations. The ideological effects on the educational policies causes it to be used as an ideological tool, more than contributing to the main purpose of education, which is creating social benefit by improving individuals’ knowledge and skills. In the systems of the societies that dispersals the political power to the society, the idea of only one ideology to become determinant is cannot be thought. Turkish Educational System was always changed to accommodate the political expectations of the political powers and only one ideology to dominate. In this paper, the compulsory education in Turkey have been studied historically, regulations of 8 and 12 years on the compulsory education have been interpreted due to the social and political changes and set forth the ideological aspects of it.