Türkiye and Turkic States Sign Education Pact in Kazakhstan

By Bosphorus News Geopolitics Desk

Education ministers from the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) signed a 21-point cooperation roadmap on June 8 at their ninth meeting in the city of Türkistan, Kazakhstan, covering joint curricula, university exchanges and a shared education database.

Türkiye's Education Minister Yusuf Tekin led the Turkish delegation, alongside Council of Higher Education (YÖK) President Erol Özvar. Tekin told the meeting it built on what he described as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's vision for a "Turkic Century," which he said leaders had endorsed at a summit in the same city a month earlier.

Tekin said Türkiye's curriculum reform, known as the Türkiye's Century Education Model, had removed historical terminology from the Cold War and World War Two eras that he said had divided Turkic states from one another. "We removed the concept of 'Central Asia' from our curricula and started using the term 'Türkistan' instead," he said.

The Türkistan change was part of a broader curriculum revision Türkiye's Education Ministry rolled out in May, which updated dozens of historical and geographic terms across textbooks. The Crusades are now referred to as "Crusader attacks" rather than "Crusader campaigns," and the Age of Discovery is taught as "the beginning of colonialism." Byzantium is now referred to as "Eastern Rome."

The revision also changed how textbooks describe the sea between Türkiye and Greece. Tekin said the term "Aegean Sea" entered Turkish usage only after World War Two, at Greece's request, and that textbooks now use "Adalar Denizi," or "Islands Sea," the name he said was in use at the time of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty.

Textbooks also now describe what had previously been taught as the "Armenian Question" and the "Pontic Question" as "baseless Armenian claims" and "baseless Pontic claims," respectively. The revised geography curriculum frames Türkiye's maritime claims, airspace and forests under the terms "Blue Homeland," "Sky Homeland" and "Green Homeland," replacing references to "our water resources," "Türkiye's airspace" and "our forests."

The OTS roadmap signed in Türkistan backs a permanent secretariat for TURKUNIB, the OTS university network, and a dedicated fund for its Orhun Exchange Program. It also welcomes an Azerbaijani proposal for a Turkic Universities League and supports a Türkiye-coordinated Turkic States Education Information Network.

Ministers agreed Kazakhstan will host the next round of the OTS Student Exchange Program, while Azerbaijan will host the Teacher Exchange Program in 2027. The Kyrgyz Republic will host the tenth OTS Education Ministers Meeting that same year.

Tekin also invited OTS members to a summit on artificial intelligence in education in Istanbul on June 26-28.

Sources: Türkiye's Ministry of National Education, Sözcü, TRT Haber, Gazete Oksijen, Bosphorus News review and reporting.