This digital humanities project investigates how national identity and key historical concepts such as "nation," "empire," and "Islam" have been represented across Turkish history textbooks from three distinct political periods: the late Ottoman Empire, the early Republican era, and post-2000s Turkey. By analyzing excerpts from textbooks published in each period, the project aims to uncover shifts in language, ideology, and historiographical priorities shaped by regime change and political discourse. Ultimately, this project seeks to critically examine how state-sponsored narratives evolve over time and how they reflect or reshape collective memory.
While the immediate goal is to demonstrate these shifts through a focused proof of concept, the long-term vision for this project—with adequate funding and institutional support—is to develop a comprehensive, open-access digital archive of Turkish history textbooks. This would serve as a critical scholarly resource for historians, educators, and students, enabling deeper engagement with the formation and transformation of national narratives across regimes.
While I do not yet have the technical expertise to fully determine the implementation details or specific tools required, I am confident that the skills and knowledge I have gained in this course will enable me to develop this project.