Democratic Citizenship

Well, as like the other lessons, with the lesson Democratic Citizenship first we focused on culture. We tried to define it. Then, we dealt with identity. We discussed it in the class. According to me, the culture of societies is very important. Every one should learn his/her own culture and try to apply it to his/her life in accordance with the situation of the time. That is to say every one should be acquinted with what he belongs and should act accordingly in a way that is suitable to the needs of time and people. 

Then we discussed about identity. We discussed if identity of a person change or not. In my opinion, the identity of a person may change. However there might be some cores or principles that don't change. Other featurs of a man which can be described as his identity may change on the basis of those cores or principles. 

As for the term Citizenship, it is about our rights, duties, responsibilities and rules that we have to obey. Both we have some responsibilities to our countries as a citizen and our countries have some duties to do for us. 

Both culture, identity and citizenship define who is a man, what he belongs and what is his charecteristics. Gives information about him. They are like a mirror. If you reflect a mirror to something, you can see them in the mirror. Just as the same way, the culture, identity and citizenship of a man reflect his personality. They are all link to each other. In fact, we can't seperate them. 

Then we discussed about DIVERSİTY IN OUR OWN COUNTRIES.

Here is some information that we agreed on our diversity in Turkey:

Diversity in Turkey

In Turkey there is no cultural clash concerning immigrants. Because immigrants moved Turkey many years ago and they are a part of Turkish culture now. Therefore they don’t feel like immigrants any more.

We have a central education system in which everybody gets the same education and the instruction language is Turkish.
-Kurdish people want to get education in their mother tongue, but the government regards this as a problem for social cohesion.

-Religion lessons includes only one sect. However; the followers of other sects do not want to learn the religion in detail because they consider that these lessons teach their children different things than they believe and they want their children to be taught cultural aspects of religion in this lessons.

-Although the education system is central, there are also some private minority schools from primary to high school. For example: Robert College, Kabataş High School (France), American college, Private Pangaltı Armenian High School, etc.These schools give the education in the language that is mother tongue for that minority. The students graduating from these schools can easily attend every Universities in Turkey. Besides, the Turkish students also can have education at these schools.

To the end of the lesson we discussed about a text by Kevin Robins. It was about "Interrrupting identities". So, we have been diveded into two groups as Turkey and Europe. Actually it was a harsh discussion. Because in my group we could not agree on ıf Mustafa Kemal interrupted the culture of Turkey or not. According to the realities, he tried to kill the culture of both Turks and Kurts. But, some in my group did not accept this. I respect to their thoughts but, we should not ignore those what happened. We have to be honest about it.