Türkiye'deki ilköğretim ders kitaplarında ideal vatandaş tasvirleri: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi hükümetleri süresince değişimler ve devamlılıklar

The present study examines the changes and continuities in the ethnic and religious aspects of the Turkish national identity during the government of the Justice and Development Party. For this purpose, it focuses on primary school textbooks which are under strict state supervision. The main drive behind this study is to show the extent to which different ethnic and religious identity communities are recognized hence included in the textbook representation of the nation. A complete assessment of the national identity-formation in textbooks during the Justice and Development mandate necessitates the comparison between the textbooks published in this era and those published just before the party's accession to power. Accordingly, this thesis builds upon the findings of comparative discourse and content analysis of textbooks from 2000 and 2012. The results of the comparative analysis on textbooks of Life Sciences, Social Sciences, and Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge courses show that similar to the general tendency of textbooks during the history of Turkey, the image of nationhood constructed in the textbooks published during the Justice and Development Party rule is hierarchically-organized. The major reason behind this is the imposition of a national identity, which is dominated by certain ethnic and religious identities, on other citizens with different ethnic and religious identities. As a consequence of this, the nation is constructed in a hierarchical pattern by assigning ethnic and religious identity communities to different ranks according to their compliance to the idealized national identity. Keywords: Turkey, the Justice and Development Party, nation, national identity, ethnicidentity, religious identity, textbooks, primary school, ideal citizen, desirable citizen, Turkishness, state, content analysis, discourse analysis.