Turkey/OER

Overview

Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti) is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in western Asia and Thrace (Rumelia) in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhichevan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast.

The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea and Archipelago are to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. Separating Anatolia and Thrace are the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish Straits (the Bosporus and the Dardanelles), which are commonly reckoned to delineate the border between Asia and Europe, thereby making Turkey transcontinental.

The population of Turkey is around 79,749,461 (July 2012 estimate by CIA's World Factbook). The capital is Ankara.

Due to its strategic location astride two continents, Turkey's culture has a unique blend of Eastern and Western tradition. A powerful regional presence in the Eurasian landmass with strong historic, cultural and economic influence in the area between Europe in the west and Central Asia in the east, Russia in the north and the Middle East in the south, Turkey has come to acquire increasing strategic significance.

Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Since then, Turkey has become increasingly integrated with the West through membership in organizations such as the Council of Europe, NATO, OECD, OSCE and the G-20 major economies. Turkey began full membership negotiations with the European Union in 2005, having been an associate member of the EEC since 1963, and having reached a customs union agreement in 1995. Meanwhile, as a Muslim-majority country, Turkey has continued to foster close cultural, political, economic and industrial relations with the Eastern world, particularly with the states of the Middle East and Central Asia, through membership in organizations such as the OIC and ECO.

The territory of Turkey is subdivided into 81 provinces for administrative purposes. The provinces are organized into 7 regions for census purposes; however, they do not represent an administrative structure. Each province is divided into districts, for a total of 923 districts.

Provinces usually bear the same name as their provincial capitals, also called the central district. Provinces with the largest populations are İstanbul (+12 million), Ankara (+4.4 million), İzmir (+3.7 million), Bursa (+2.4 million), Adana (+2.0 million) and Konya (+1.9 million).

The biggest city and the pre-Republican capital İstanbul is the financial, economic and cultural heart of the country.[ Other important cities include İzmir, Bursa, Adana, Trabzon, Malatya, Gaziantep, Erzurum, Kayseri, Kocaeli, Konya, Mersin, Eskişehir, Diyarbakır, Antalya and Samsun. An estimated 70.5% of Turkey's population live in urban centers. In all, 18 provinces have populations that exceed 1 million inhabitants, and 21 provinces have populations between 1 million and 500,000 inhabitants. Only two provinces have populations less than 100,000.

Turkey has an average population density of 92 persons per km². The proportion of the population residing in urban areas is 70.5%. People within the 15–64 age group constitute 66.5% of the total population, the 0–14 age group corresponds 26.4% of the population, while 65 years and higher of age correspond to 7.1% of the total population. According to the CIA Factbook, life expectancy stands at 70.67 years for men and 75.73 years for women, with an overall average of 73.14 years for the populace as a whole

Turkey is officially a secular republic, with no official state religion; the Turkish Constitution provides the freedom of religion and conscience, but does not represent or promote a religion. The population of Turkey is predominantly Muslim (99%) - the majority are Sunni (75%) and a large minority are Alevi (15-25%). The small remainder of the population are mainly Christians and Jews.

Further information

For further general information see Wikipedia:Turkey/OER.

Education in Turkey/OER

For a general description of education in Turkey/OER see Education:Turkey/OER.

e-learning

For a description more focussed to e-learning see E-learning:Turkey/OER.

In 2004, the government of Turkey introduced educations reforms that were geared at preparing students for a modern future that is open to cultures of other people. A policy document for integrating ICT as an indispensable part of lifelong learning was adopted for schools from basic education (Grade 1 through to Grade 8) through primary to higher education. ICT initiatives that have been completed or in progress indicate that the government is committed to the use of ICTs for management, education and training purposes. By the year 2005, 15,350 ICT classrooms had been established already with distribution of hundreds of thousands of computers for both students and teachers, instructional administrative softwares, broadband internet access options like satelite and ISDN had been provided. More than 20,000 schools had internet connections already. ICT infrastructure and operation has significantly improved ever since then with almost all levels of education making use of computer-assisted and ICT based learning. However, there are still issues in Turkey related to few computers to ensure complete integration of ICT in the school system. There are still slow internet connections with some providers and the lack of peripheral equipments in a few schools and insufficient software in the native language. (1)

OER Initiatives in Turkey/OER

Turkey was the only country which, in its response to the OECD questionnaire, stated that cost-efficiency is not relevant to its motivations for the uptake of OER. It was also the only country to report that copyright issues were not a challenge which concerned them. Turkey reported that its General Directorate for Lifelong Learning has currently been separated from the General Directorate of Educational Technologies in order to become more active in OER movement. (2)

References

1. ReVica/VISCED page for Turkey (http://virtualcampuses.eu/index.php/Turkey)

Reports

1. Hylén, J. et al. (2012), "Open Educational Resources: Analysis of Responses to the OECD Country Questionnaire", OECD Education Working Papers, No. 76, OECD Publishing. http://oer.unescochair-ou.nl/?wpfb_dl=38
2. Kursun, E. and Cagiltay, K. (2011), "Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges for Turkish Higher Educational Institutions", https://www.academia.edu/579678/Open_Educational_Resources_Opportunities_and_Challenges_for_Turkish_Higher_Educational_Institutions

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