Democratic Citizenship

The Minorities in Turkey 

Sinem, Emine, Bahar and me made a group work on the homework of the democratic citizenship. It is about the point of view of media on minorities in Turkey. 

Here is the Human Rights Joint platforms research which was made by instructors of Communication Faculty about struggle of discrimination. The title of the research is ‘Racism on Media ‘. A great deal of data have been found out that mostly Kurdish, Armenian, Christian and Alevi people who belong to a sect in Islam are the target of the discriminatory discourse. The research focused on the bestseller newspapers contrast to the newspapers that are mostly known as racist. According to research the discrimination is generally found on the columns. In the research, it was determined that 52% of the articles including ethnic-religious and cultural discrimination is found in the columns and comments. It was found that the newspaper called Zaman has published 25 news and 54 columns and comments containing discrimination-racism, which means that columns and comments include much more racism. During the research, for 13 months against all kinds’ emphasis on Turks, Kurdish people have been on news, comments and the columns for 46 times. According to research, Kurdish people have been associated with the terrorism, terrorist; PKK, events of violence in 115 titles and their demand for rights have been ignored.

In the study, according to the analysis of 1616 news and content of articles that have been examined,

The rates of racist-discriminatory news published in the newspapers in Turkey are as the following:

40 % in HÜRRİYET

29 % in ZAMAN

15% in POSTA

On the other hand, these newspapers contain also anti-racist-news. For example;

Hürriyet has published 443 racist news but also has 36 anti-racist news.

Zaman has published 82 anti-racist news.

Posta has published 9 anti-racist news.

Here is the source of the information and you can find more information from the link : 

http://aleyhtar.org/x/gazetelerin-her-santimi-ayrimcilik/

Here is the link for the homepage of newspapers: 

Hürriyet : http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/anasayfa/

Zaman : http://www.zaman.com.tr/

Posta : http://www.posta.com.tr/

An Intercultural Research for Democratic Citizenship

An interview with our teacher in my teaching experience :

- Do you think your class is multicultural? Why?
+ Yes, because in my class there are students from different countries (students from Poland, Hungary and also Iraq) and also among Danish students there is a lot of different cultures

- What are you doing for your students to feel good in your class? (Concerning intercultural students)
+ Polish girl - knows a little of Danish language, comes from strict catholic school and I think, she does not want to be here, we tried to solve it with her parents, school psychologists. It is her second year here and the first year class really tried hard to involve her, but the more she refused them, the less they tried.
+ Other students are well integrated, without any bigger problems

- What do you think is the hardest thing to deal with for your intercultural students?

- Do you think it is different to teach culture in multicultural class and in class with only Danish students?
+ It is easier in multicultural classes, because there is more points of view and you can make a better discussion; if it is class only from Danish students, they are very narrow minded (they are young, so they do not have such experience and Danish culture is the only thing they knew)
+ Bigger cities, there is more cultures then in smaller cities like here, in Vordingborg

- How do you teach democratic citizenship in your classes? (Education for democracy and citizenship)
+ I try to find examples children understand and interest them, we also speak about democracy in history lessons
+ When we are making rules of class, we discuss about it -> I always want every student to speak and to be heard

- Do you think, it is necessary to teach democratic citizenship?
+ Yes, It is important for students to know how great country they have and that it does not come free - they have to work for it. I want them to appreciate it and to try to keep it alive.

; I teach children different culture in order to teach them how to be tolerant, to respect other people
; It is important to see your students regularly, so you can be sure that they are happy in school
; Be sure, that every children is heard
; If there is any problem (behaviour problems, bullying) we cooperate with police, psychologists and other institutions working with children