‘A Fatal Blow’ and reconfiguring responsibility: discursive framings and educational outcomes of Turkey’s 4 + 4 + 4 law

Since the 2000s, education in Turkey has undergone structural and ideological transformations shaped by the interplay of neoliberalism, Islamism, and conservatism. Focusing on the 2012 ‘4 + 4 + 4’ reform, this study employs Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis to examine competing framings across three national newspapers and identify the discursive structures underlying education policy. It shows how discourses of ‘choice’ and ‘flexibility’ connected market-oriented and religious-conservative rationalities, while shifting educational responsibility from the state towards families and promoting differentiated educational pathways. The analysis reveals how these ideological projects converged within the same policy discourse reconfiguring the meanings of public responsibility, educational choice, and inequality.