Foreign language education in Turkish history and suggestions for improvement in the light of the 2023 Education Vision of the Ministry of National Education

Education has always been one of the most important issues in Turkish history for thousands of years. The educational understanding and practices of the first Turkish communities were shaped by their lifestyles. The first Turkish civilizations in Central Asia, consisting of horse-drawn nomadic tribes, interacted with their closest neighbor China for many years and exchanged both culture and language as a result of this interaction. After their conversion to Islam, Turks moved to the west and interacted with the Arab world and Iran, as a result of their relations with these civilizations, they learned Arabic to read and understand the Qur'an as well as cultural exchange and used Persian in many areas of daily life until the middle of the 19th century. Turning completely to the West with the proclamation of the Republic, Turkey has focused on education in French and German rather than Arabic and Persian in foreign language teaching. Since 1950, English has started to be the dominant foreign language in Turkey as in the whole world, and foreign language education policies have been shaped over this language. Although modern language education policies and practices have been tried many times on foreign language education, especially in English, for more than 60 years, the desired level of success has not been achieved. In this study, suggestions to increase the level of success in foreign language education will be proposed in the light of the "MEB 2023 Education Vision", which is currently in practice.