Minister of Education of Turkey Yusuf Tekin made a caller onslaught against Greeceproposing to regenerate the title successful Turkish schoolhouse textbooks Aegean Sea connected “Sea of Islands” — Adalar Denizi.
According to the Turkish work T24Tekin stated that during the signing Treaty of Lausanne supposedly there was nary term “Aegean Sea”and the close sanction was “Sea of Islands”.
This logic does not look similar a interest for the accuracy of textbooks, but similar different effort to set geography to a governmental enactment Ankara. If the sanction reminds you of Greeceit seemingly needs to beryllium replaced. A very technological approach: erase a word and anticipation that past disappears with it.
Textbooks arsenic a tract of revisionism
Tekin said the changes are portion of a broader betterment of the schoolhouse curriculum. It replaces not lone geographical, but besides humanities terms: for example, “Crusades” it is projected to telephone “crusade attacks”A “Central Asia” — “Turkestan”.
Pro-government paper Yeni Akit has already presented this attack arsenic a motion “national and section thinking”. The thesis is straight repeated there: you request to accidental not Ege DeniziA Adalar Denizibecause the title “Aegean Sea” supposedly consolidated under the power of the Greeks.
In practice, we are talking not astir linguistics, but astir politics. The sanction of the oversea is being turned into portion of the ideological training of schoolchildren. Geography is becoming not a science, but an exertion to Turkish overseas argumentation doctrine.
“Blue Motherland” enters the classroom
This enactment is straight related to the doctrine “Mavi Vatan” (“Blue Homeland”). As antecedently written “Athens News”topic “Blue Motherland” and term Adalar Denizi person already appeared connected the Turkish acquisition docket arsenic portion of a programme where Turkish maritime rights and interests are explained to schoolchildren. More details: material from Athens News.
That is why the quality astir the sanction Aegean Sea cannot beryllium considered an guiltless terminological correction. Ankara has consistently transferred revisionist connection from politicians’ statements and maps to schoolhouse textbooks. That is, they explicate to the aboriginal procreation successful advance: the oversea is not conscionable a sea, but a tract of Turkish claims.
At the aforesaid time, the internationally accepted sanction Aegean Sea has an past tradition and is associated with the Greek humanities and taste environment. Encyclopedia Britannica defines the Aegean Sea arsenic the portion of the Mediterranean Sea betwixt the Greek Peninsula and Asia Minor. So the version of a “post-war Greek invention” looks, to enactment it mildly, arsenic a politically convenient fantasy.
Editorial comment
When the state begins to alteration the names of the seas successful schoolhouse textbooks, this is nary longer education, but ideological engineering. Turkish children are really being asked not to study geography, but to memorize a governmental representation of desires Ankara.
The occupation is not the word itself “Sea of Islands”. The occupation is the goal: region the title Aegean Seabecause it irritates Turkish revisionist rhetoric. This is nary longer a quality betwixt scientists, but an effort to refashion the consciousness of schoolchildren under the doctrine “Blue Motherland”.
This is however the conflict for the textbook begins, but preparing for aboriginal claims. First they alteration the words, then the cards, then they explicate that each this has ever been “ours.”
The reception is arsenic aged arsenic time…
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