Extract

Serhan Ada

The cultural policy of the Republic of Turkey, now in its 90th year in 2013, has displayed occasional fluctuations, and sometimes, formal innovations in accordance with changing governments, their political and economic choices, and events that have taken place in the world at large. I have previously published a paper, which carried out analyses of such developments according to periods (cp. Ada 2009). Applying a different perspective, which will seek to comprehend what has remained the same during all such changes, of what could be described as characteristics that transcend a periodical view and have become increasingly distinct as the cultural policy of Turkey has become a topic of a growing number of researches and studies, will facilitate both the understanding of cultural policies in Turkey during the Republican period, and clarify what steps could be taken in the future. In this article, I will first introduce a number of theses based on the common characteristics of the cultural policy of Turkey, and then attempt to assess them from the perspective of cultural governance.

First and foremost, it is necessary to specifically describe what the term “cultural policy of Turkey” means. Until the 1970s, the Ministry of Culture was not part of the cabinet, so the diverse range of ministries and offices that operated in various fields of culture, educational implementations in the fields of art and culture, cultural diplomacy activities designated by foreign policy; and later, all the implementations of the Ministry of...