| Capital |
Ankara 2.7 million |
| Major cities |
Istanbul
(Constantinople) 8
million |
| |
Izmir (Smyrna) 1.8
million |
| |
Adana 1 million |
EconomyTourism, agriculture and
industry are all integral to the
Turkish economy; with rapid
development in the 1980s. In
terms of agriculture, it is
self-sufficient - the Cilician
Plain in Turkey’s south is
purportedly fertile enough to
feed the whole of Europe.
Remittances from the 2.5 million
Turks working in Western Europe
are a significant source of
foreign exchange. The collapse of
the USSR in 1990 and
Turkey’s subsequent cultural
and economic ties with Central
Asian Turkic republics
(Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan) are of deep future
significance. Turkey is, at the
same time, one of Europe’s
poorer nations and the richest
and most developed of the six
Turkic nations of Central Asia. Unemployment:
est. 20%; Foreign
debt/person: $611; Income/person:
$1,360 (6.2% of USA); Inflation:
70%+.
Politics
The Turkish
Ottoman Empire once stretched
across North Africa, Arabia,
Western Asia and Southeast
Europe. Its demise and final
fragmentation in World War I led
to revolution and the formation
of a republic in 1923. Periods of
social disorder and military rule
led to a return of democratic
government in 1983, but with the
military still retaining
considerable influence. Turkey is
a member of NATO, but is in
dispute with former NATO member,
Greece, for long-standing
historical reasons and over
territorial rights in the Aegean
Sea and the division of Cyprus.
Suppression of the large Kurdish
minority has been moderated, but
an intensifying guerilla war
fought by a Marxist Kurdish
liberation movement since 1985
has disrupted life in the east of
Anatolia. Turkey’s cultural
links with Central Asia and
proximity to conflicts in Iraq
and the Balkans have enhanced the
Turkey’s strategic
importance.
Religion
Turkey’s
Ottoman Empire was for centuries
the guardian of all the holy
places of Islam and its chief
protagonist. Since the sweeping
reforms of the 1920s Turkey has
officially been a secular state.
In recent years Islam has become
a more important political
factor, making the lot of
non-Muslim minorities more
difficult despite the
constitutional guarantee of
religious freedom. Muslim: 99.8%
(majority Sunni Muslims 83% with
other smaller Muslim religious
affiliations); Jews: 0.04%;
Christian: 0.02%. Turkey is a
nation torn in opposite
directions, struggling between
the pressure to develop stronger
links with the Muslim world from
a growing fundamentalist movement
- and the pull of the West -
fostering relations with Europe
with a view to full membership in
the EEC. This is evident in the
country’s current political
turmoil. Constantly shifting
political alignments between the
smaller democratic parties have
characterised the last year of
Turkish politics, leading up to
and since the December 1995
election.
(Since
writing this only two months ago,
the Turkish political situation
has again changed with an
unprecedented and unlikely
alliance now formed between
Necmettin Erbakan’s Islamist
Welfare Party and former Prime
Minister Tansu Çiller’s
non-religious True Truth Party.
The union represents
'Turkey’s first
Islamist-majority coalition
government since Kemal Ataturk
declared Turkey a secular state
in 1923' (TIME, July 22, 1996,
p32). Predicably, the reactions
in Turkey and indeed
internationally have been mixed.
Some of my Turkish friends
suggest that ‘Islamist’
is the new politically correct
term for fundamentalist,
expressing concern about
Turkey’s future under
non-secular government. Others
are more supportive, seeing it as
the Muslim world’s greatest
hope for an egalitarian Islamic
State. Still others say it
won’t last.)
Patterns of
Turkish Migration to Australia
The Turkish
community in Australia today is
reasonably well-established,
largely made up of families who
have been settled in Australia
for longer than a decade and
whose children have grown up in
Australia. The authors of Making
Something of Myself (1992), a
research-initiative of the
Federal Office of Multicultural
Affairs, attribute this most
immediately to the 1967 agreement
between the Turkish and
Australian governments, made to
facilitate the provision of
assisted migration to Australia
for Turks. Turkish migration
prior to this agreement had been
scattered; most Turkish migrants
were not in fact Turkish-born but
rather Turkish Cypriots. The 1967
agreement coincided with
increasing Turkish interest in
employment opportunities outside
Turkey, particularly in Europe.
Turkish migrants were the first
major Muslim religious group to
arrive in Australia in the years
after World War II (Inglis et.al.
1992)..
Table
3.1 Turkish Born Population
1947-1986 (Source: Inglis, C.
et.al. (1992) Making Something of
Myself, Canberra: Government
Publishing, p1.)
| |
| Year |
Population |
|
| 1947 |
252 |
| 1961 |
1544 |
| 1966 |
2476 |
| 1971 |
11589 |
| 1976 |
19355 |
| 1981 |
24315 |
| 1986 |
24529 |
The sharp
decline in growth of the
Australian Turkish population in
the early 1980s, shown here, is
associated with reduced
opportunity for assisted
migration to Australia for
unskilled workers, a result of
economic recession and a decrease
in the availability of
employment. More recent patterns
suggest a renewal of migration
from Turkey but one characterised
by more educated and skilled
professional groups of migrants
(Inglis et.al. 1992).
Table 3.2. Percentage
of Australian-born Turks under
25, 1986. (Source: adapted from
Inglis, C. et.al. (1992) Making
Something of Myself, Canberra:
Government Publishing, p2.)
| Age group |
Percent born in
Australia |
| 15-24 yrs |
13% |
| 5-14 yrs |
75% |
| under 5 yrs |
95% |
According to figures from the
last census, one third of all
Australians with Turkish ancestry
in 1986 were Australian-born.
This translates today to the
majority of Turkish Australians
of school age as being either
Australian-born, or as having
arrived in Australia as young
children, who had the bulk of
their schooling here.
The Turkish Community in
Australia
Perhaps the most immediately
noticeable pattern of the
migration and settlement of
Turkish migrant families is the
residential concentration which
exists in Sydney and Melbourne. Table
3.3. Top Four Population-Centres
of Turkish-born Australians in
NSW, 1986. (Source: adapted from
Inglis, C. et.al. (1992) Making
Something of Myself, Canberra:
Government Publishing, p26.)
| LGA ( NSW) |
Turkish Population |
% of LGA Population |
% of Total Turkish |
| Auburn |
2260 |
4.8% |
21.4% |
| Fairfield |
817 |
0.5% |
7.8% |
| Marrickville |
769 |
0.9% |
7.3% |
| Blacktown |
750 |
0.4% |
7.1% |
The sizeable Turkish
populations in these areas has
resulted in the development of
community infra-structure and
services relevant to the needs
and wants of the Turkish
community. As Inglis et.al (1992)
suggest, "the network and
facilities are now developed to
such an extent that Turkish
migrants can choose to move in a
world that is to a large extent
identifiably Turkish" (p28).
For example in Auburn, which
has been the main population
centre for Turkish-Australians in
Sydney for some time, it is
possible to buy halal (or helal)
meat from a local kasap
(butcher); purchase imported
specialty fruits, jams, olives
and pickles from a local
Turkish-Australian delicatessen;
taste freshly made pide bread or
shish kebab, bought from a local
fIrIncI (baker) or cafe and hire
Turkish movies from a local
video-store. Today, Turks also
have access to Turkish
pharmacists, doctors, solicitors,
accountants and other
professionals, as well as access
to their own places of worship.
In addition, provision is made
by the Victorian and New South
Wales departments of education
for Turkish language support for
school students, through Saturday
community language classes and by
more extensive bilingual support
programs within schools. Such
initiatives work to facilitate
greater language proficiency in
both English and the mother
tongue. For example Liberty
Plains Primary offers two
part-time Turkish language
teachers, teaching Turkish
‘mainstream’ to classes
across the entire school, and
also teaching Turkish to
Turkish-Australian students
within normal class time.
Cultural and Language Issues
- School and Classroom Issues
| "So when we
think about students from
other backgrounds, we
really need to
contextualise, rather
than make stereotyped
assumptions,"
stresses Maria...
"It’s also
important that educators
don’t talk about
cultural difference in
terms of
disadvantage," she
adds, pointing out that
many girls gain a strong
sense of identity and
pride in their heritage.
"There still seems
to be this idea that if
you are not from the
dominant culture you must
be disadvantaged. If
schools provide
opportunities for girls
to look at both the
positive and negative
aspects of their
cultures, they can then
choose which cultural
meanings are important to
them, which ones they
want to let go, and which
ones they want to adopt
from the multicultural
world around them." ‘Interweaving’:
Ethnicity, Gender and
Sexuality. Maria
Pallotta-Chiarolli The
Gen, May 1996; http://www.deet.gov.au/pubs/the_gen/
|
According to
Inglis et.al (1992) the image of
disadvantage that seems to cling
to certain ethnic groupings and
the Turkish community in
particular, is typically
associated with the 'perceived
cultural traits' (p5) of the
communities: ...at the simplest
level these traits are viewed as
barriers to success or, in a more
complex/sophisticated
conceptualisation, as factors
which, in interaction with the
school or labour market, are a
hindrance to success. Among the
cultural and social
characteristics which are
frequently mentioned are lack of
English language; limited
education, frequently associated
with a de-emphasis on the value
of education; and religious
beliefs considered especially to
disadvantage girls who are
prevented from continuing with
education either because it is
seen as unnecessary for their
futures or may bring them into
undesirable contact with young
men...(p5).
However, this
conceptualisation of culture,
modelled around the shared sets
of meanings perceived to be
characteristic of an ethnic
group, lends itself to a
compensatory view of the role of
education. Cultural traits are
seen as either desirable or
undesirable, depending on the
degree of mismatch with the
‘culture’ of the
Australian school system. As
such, ‘effective’
education in the multicultural
context works to empower the
socially and culturally
marginalised, counteracting the
effects of a disadvantaged
background.
However, it is clear that
concentration on these perceived
cultural idiosyncrasies provides
an inadequate explanation of the
broader and underlying cultural
processes at work, processes
which intersect and interweave
(Pallotta-Chiarolli, 1996) to
affect the determination of
cultural and educational futures.
Neither does preoccupation with
cultural deficit (Ekermann, 1994)
assist us with the identification
of appropriate teaching
strategies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contacts & Sources
My Turkish friends in Sydney and
in Turkey.
My own input - gleaned from
first-hand interactions and
experiences in Turkey last year
and also through contact with the
Turkish community in Sydney.
The two Turkish language
(Türkçe) teachers at Liberty
Plains Primary School.
My friend Janine, a STLD (Special
Teacher Learning Difficulties) at
Liberty Plains Primary School.
Auburn Migrant Resource Centre
17 Macquarie Rd
Auburn NSW 2144
References
Allen, T.B., & Reza (1994)
'Turkey Struggles for Balance' in
National Geographic, 185 (5),
May, pp2-36.
Clarke, D., (1994) The Thomas
Cook Traveller’s Guide to
Turkey, Hampshire: AA Publishing.
Eckermann, A., (1994) One
Classroom, Many Cultures:
Teaching Strategies for
culturally different children, St
Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Hitchens, C., & Kashi, E.,
(1992) ' Struggle of the Kurds'
in National Geographic, 182 (2),
August, pp32-61.
Inglis, C., et.al (1992)
‘Making Something of
Myself’: Educational
attainment and social and
economic mobility of
Turkish-Australian young people,
Canberra: AGPS.*
Johnstone, P., (1993)
Operation World, Rydalmere:
Crossroad Distributors.
Nelan, B.W., (1996) 'A Hunger
for Justice' in TIME Magazine,
August 5, p42.
Pallotta-Chiarolli, M., (1996)
‘Interweaving’:
Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality
in The Gen, May 1996; http://www.deet.gov.au/pubs/the_gen
Usher, R., (1996) 'Odd Couple
in Power' in TIME Magazine, July
22, p32.
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