The medium-of-instruction debate in Turkey: oscillating between national ideas and bilingual ideals

AbstractSituated at the intersection of sociolinguistic and educational planes, English as a medium-of-instruction debate has always been at the crux of the intense debates, and offers a lens for a systematic investigation of the spread of English in Turkey. As Turkey is moving toward greater integration with the European Union and promoting its competitiveness at the global level, the medium-of-instruction debate is more relevant than ever. Departing from this conceptualization, this state-of-the-art article investigates the medium-of-instruction debate in Turkey by drawing from a wide range of sources including official documents, news articles, and empirical research reports. I contend that the medium-of-instruction pendulum in Turkey is oscillating between national ideas and bilingual ideals, and consequently creates a tremendous influence on social and educational strata of Turkish society. In order to document the swing of the pendulum, the current paper presents a blend of the historical and the sociolinguistic trajectories of the debate and overviews implications in the field of education. The paper concludes with a problematization of existing policies and implementations, and suggests educational policy recommendations that might inform the future of the medium-of-instruction debate and English-language teaching in the formation of twenty-first-century Turkey.Keywords: medium of instructionTurkeyEnglishlanguage planninglanguage-in-education Notes on contributorAli Fuad Selvi is Visiting Assistant Professor of TESOL and Applied Linguistics in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language Program at Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus, and the current chair of the Non-native English-speakers in TESOL Interest Section in TESOL International Association. His research interests include the sociolinguistics of English-language teaching with special emphasis on the global spread of English as an international language and its implications for language learning, teaching, teacher education, and policy/planning; issues related to non-native English-speaking professionals in TESOL; and second-language teacher education (particularly teacher cognition, the notion of praxis, and the interplay between second language acquisition and second language pedagogy). He is the co-author of Teaching English as an international language (2013) published by TESOL Press.Notes1 Although the scope of the current paper does not allow for a comprehensive and cross-national review of English as medium-of-instruction policies, interested readers may refer to Hamid, Nguyen, and Baldauf (Citation2013), Baldauf, Kaplan, Kamwangamalu, and Bryant (Citation2011, 2012), Graddol (Citation2010), Johnstone, (2010), Kirkpatrick (Citation2011), Nunan (Citation2003), and Tsui and Tollefson (Citation2007) for Asia and the Pacific; Ammon and McConnell (Citation2002), Coleman (Citation2006), Truchot (Citation2002), and Wachter and Maiworm (Citation2008) for Europe; and Kamwangamalu, Hamid, and Nguyen (Citation2014), Benson (Citation2002), Ferguson (Citation2013), McIlwraith (Citation2013), and Vavrus (Citation2002) for Africa.2 It should be noted that neither the scope nor the space in this paper is sufficient to elaborate fully on the link between the political stance of the AK Party and its implications for educational policies. However, the political reference was added to provide a comprehensive account for interested readers since the Party, despite its short history (2002 to present), was influential in shaping the present-day Turkey in almost all respects.3 While there is no formal name (cf. ‘Ivy League’ in the USA), national ranking (cf. ‘US News’, ‘Forbes’ in the USA, ‘The Research Assessment Exercise’ in the UK or ‘The Good Universities Guide’, ‘Excellence in Research for Australia’ in Australia), or classification used to identify these institutions of higher education in Turkey, even a perfunctory look at the rankings in the international rankings (e.g. Times Higher Education, QS World University Rankings, Webometrics) as well as in the Student Selection and Placement Exam easily reveals a ranking comprising these institutions.4 The author has formally contacted MoNE officials to get an update on the status of the project of recruiting native English-speaking professionals for the local schools. Although it was indicated that the project has been suspended indefinitely, no official public statement has been made by the ministry.5 Such venues include journals that are indexed in such major databases as Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Elton B. Stephens Company (EBSCO), Arts and Humanities Citation Index, and Linguistics/Language Behavior Abstracts.6 It should be acknowledged that managing local circumstances is a far more difficult and ambitious endeavor for the massive and centralized Turkish public school system, which accounts for 97% of the student population at K-12 levels across the nation. This figure not only suggests that educational policy-makers should refrain from hastily passing ill-prepared reforms; it also serves as an explanation for the more privileged status of private schools in educational policy implementation in the country.