Ece Cihan Ertem

This monograph traces the shifting paradigm of the teaching profession in Turkey through the lens of neoliberal structural adjustments. It investigates how economic rationalities have reshaped the professional identity and societal standing of teachers over three decades of political transformation, interrogating the degradation of professional autonomy and the commodification of pedagogical labor.

This article examines how globally rising new authoritarianism intervenes in academic life through a case study, Boğaziçi University in Turkey. Drawing on in-depth interviews, campus observations, and documentary sources, it also critiques the limitations of the Academic Freedom Index in capturing context-specific threats to academic freedom. The study proposes an alternative framework that includes political participation and horizontal governance as core dimensions. The article argues that the emerging resistance to the violation of academic freedom not only challenges authoritarian tendencies and interventions but also actively redefines academic freedom.

This paper conceptualises rising authoritarianism in Turkey under the conservative ruling party, AKP, and its Sunni-Islamist educational policies. It scrutinises the Islamisation of early childhood and primary-secondary school education during the recent authoritarian turn. The discourse of ‘raising a religious generation’ entails reframing the Turkish secular education system into a Sunni Islam model. The article first situates early childhood, primary, and secondary school policies and discusses five major policy alterations during the contemporary authoritarianism of the AKP: restructured Preacher’s Schools (Imam-Hatip Schools), the 4+4+4 system, cooperation with Islamic sects, implementation of values education, and public Islamic kindergartens.