The United Nations (UN) and Council of Europe (CoE) have engaged in the development of a human rights education (HRE) curriculum in Turkey. The study programme for an elective high school course, "Democracy and Human Rights," was first developed as part of the UN Decade for HRE initiative in 1999. The programme was later renewed as part…

Media freedom and independence are the pillars of a given democratic society. Since the media makes up the bridge between the political authority and the public opinion, its independence is crucial for the survival of democracy. However, the history of the media has always been paved with obstacles of different kinds. This paper examines the…

During the last decade the agenda of local and global politics is heavily marked by the encounter of two powerful currents, namely democracy and political Islam. On the one hand Islam as a religion itself is facing a cultural dialectic between a modern and an authentic form, producing a synthesis which is only to be criticized again by a new…

The concept of state has a specific importance for Turkish-political culture. However, the influence of textbooks in constructing the state concept in Turkish culture from Ottoman to modern Turkish Republic has not been adequately researched. In this paper, the relation between the state perception in Turkish culture and textbooks from Ottoman to…