Internationalism and the New Turkey

This book examines international education in Turkey after World War I. In this period, a movement for peace and international education among American educators emerged. This effort, however, had to be reconciled with the nationalist projects of new nation-states emerging from the war. In the case of the Near East that meant coming to terms with the radically nationalist modernization project of Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish Republic. Using the case of Robert College, an American educational institution in Istanbul, which aimed to foster a future local elite of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious student body, the book sheds light on the negotiation between two conceptions of modernity, as represented by American internationalist ideals and the tenets of Kemalism the Westernizing, yet deeply ethnocentric national ideology of post-1923 Turkey. Based on recently declassified archival sources, this study addresses the educational intentions and strategies for adjustment of college faculty. It