Re-imagining society and childhood: An analysis of cultural politics of childhood in Turkey

Abstract

Neoliberalism along with other sites of cultural, social and political life has created deep impacts on childhood. With the rise of neoliberalisation of policies, childhood has come to be defined in terms of economic utility and wellbeing of society. In this paper, we examine the process of neoliberalisation through the changing role and meaning of childhood. We inquire the role of childhood in re-imagining of the Turkish society based on the data from the document of the strategic vision of the Turkish government. We seek to track the evolving notion of childhood and roles ascribed to it. By applying a critical discourse lens to the document of 8th Five Year Development Plan and Strategic Vision of 2023, we explain how the cultural politics of childhood work as tools of creating present and future workers. We examine the shifting place of childhood and instrumentalisation of childhood in neoliberal imagination of policy.

Keywords

childhood cultural politics discourse analysis neoliberalisation policy

Introduction

It is a widely held belief that factors influencing societal design have been in close relationship with time, expectations and exigencies related to forms of power at the macro and micro level. The process of building a society has always been a tender and vulnerable one open to manipulations of power and contestations. Power, through various discourses strives to fashion society by transforming individuals starting in the early life period of the individual, which is why childhood period becomes a primary target for the long-term policies of states. The process of realising a social imagination is not a smooth and problem free one. It is a process open to contestations, struggles and contradictions. Therefore, one should not assume that these long-term plans turn into success, even though they do in most cases.

The designation of childhood as a different life period is a relatively new idea (Aries, 1962; Rose, 1999). The concept of modern childhood appeared as a response to the exigencies of modern society, defined in the very context of the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution and the progress of bourgeoisie as the dominant class (İnal, 2007). With the advent of modernity both as an idea and a technology, childhood has turned into an intensely governed social entity. Therefore, functions and values attributed to childhood have long been a subject matter of policy-making and relations of power (Kjørholt, 2007; Woodrow and Press, 2007).

The reproduction of power through institutions like state and family has necessitated the childhood to become an important tool in cultural and pedagogic processes (Darıcı, 2009; Foucault, 1977; Gibson et al., 2015). Daily practices aiming to define and transform childhood in its very context (e.g. family, school, public spaces) contributed the production of modern power (Foucault, 2006; Millei, 2014). These practices, on the one hand helped power to maintain its hegemony, and on the other hand resituated childhood with respect to changing needs.

We argue that at least in Turkey if not elsewhere, we live in a time and space where institutions and society are in constant remaking with respect neoliberal ideals through recurring policy-shifts which happens to be the most important tactical tool in the conceptual toolbox of neoliberalism. Childhood is one of the fields where there have been constant efforts to remake it through neoliberal policies.

Neoliberalisation of policies¹ has introduced a new tactical dimension to the concept of childhood. Current practices of neoliberal policies have caused childhood to be re-imagined in terms of economic needs (Burman, 2005). Policies aiming to restructure childhood have a neoliberal economic overtone (İnal, 2014). In this paper, we track down this line of policy making and the instrumentalisation of childhood in the Turkish context.

Childhood and development plans in Turkey

It is hard to reach to a certain conclusion about the place and role of childhood in building a particular type of society in the Turkish context, because the number of studies addressing the issues has been very scarce. Yet, the limited studies revealed that childhood was a key factor and a problematic in the early Republican Period of Turkey. The new republic, founded in 1923, was imagined as a modern nation-state. Children of the new state were idealised with respect to the new imagination. The idealised child was supposed to be intelligent, handful, hard worker, strong, clean, properly dressed, good-looking, proud, determined and virtuous (İnal, 2014). Studies concerning the place of childhood in the Turkish imagination revealed that child was situated as a weak and innocent individual needed to be protected, and educated for the goodness of society (Akyüz, 2004; Çelik, 2014; İnal, 1999; Toprak, 2017).

Up to the 1980s,² the ideal citizen and the ideal child had been constructed with respect to ideological pillars of nation-state. After the coup d’état of 1980, the formation and the characteristics of the ideal citizen were redefined. The new citizen, and the child by extension, was supposed to be a consumerist one (Aksoy and Eren Deniz, 2018). Since then, there have been tireless efforts to create the new citizen by reimagining and remaking policies that would transform the government. The operationalisation of neoliberal policies as the sole policy-making agenda, and transformation of the state and public services in the 1980s and afterwards were carried out through legislative regulations and mechanisms. In this regard, development plans have been serving as road maps to achieve the nature of aforementioned transformation. Development plans carved in Turkey since 1980s have been encouraging the withdrawal of the state from markets and creation of competitive business environments, and a new type of society (Ünal, 1999). In this respect, development plans prepared the necessary space of legitimation for the neoliberal policies of government. Yet these policies were far from producing effects that advocates of neoliberalism wanted until 2002.

In 2002, with the rise of political Islam (AKP-Justice and Development Party) to power, Turkey witnessed an effective and decisive transition to neoliberal policies through various structural reforms (Oğuz, 2012; Uçkaç, 2010). We consider developments plans as precise locations to track the nature of this transition in its crystallised form which is why we focused on development plans. Among these, the 8th Five Year Development published in 2000 had a special place because it did not only plan the next five year, but also proposed a long-term strategy. In fact, it had a separate part called as ‘The Vision of 2023’, which argued for the structural adjustments required for a complete integration to global economy. This document has been serving to AKP as a blueprint for neoliberalisation of the country since then.

We called these documents of imagination because of the fact that they have been describing particular futures which might or might not come true. The present study placed a great importance on describing and evaluating the content, limits, contradictions and possibilities of this imagination. It was also equally important to evaluate the outstanding balance of policies and reforms of 2000s and the present situation and future direction of neoliberalisation of Turkey. This study critically examined the imagination presented in the 8th Five Year Development Plan of Turkey with a special focus on the notion of childhood.

Methodological considerations

This study epistemologically positions itself within the field of critical discourse analyses. The study of discourse has been an influential understanding of inquiry, encompassing various approaches such as Dispositive Analysis, (Jager and Maier, 2009); Socio-Cognitive Approach (van Dijk, 1988, 2001, 2009); Discourse Historical Approach (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009); Corpus Linguistics Approach (Mautner, 2009); Social Actors Approach (van Leeuwen, 2009); and Dialectical-Relational Approach (Fairclough, 1993, 1995, 2009).

These approaches have proven to be very useful and powerful in analysing documents, specifically policy documents. Yet we recognise two problems that could potentially influence the analysis. The first issue is these approaches tend to be text-based and to concern itself with the meanings of text. We, however are not interested in meanings hidden in the text. As Foucault (2002) would remind us the search for meanings is an endless job because meanings and interpretations can be indefinite. Instead we focus on consequences. Following Foucault (2008), we believe that researcher should focus on what the discourse tries to do and accomplish. More specifically, the aim of researcher should be to reveal the material and actual effects of discourse.

The second remark we would like to point out is that discourse studies tend to see a fast closure between the intent and the outcome. In the case of policy and strategy documents, discourse studies tend to see a direct link between the intent and the outcome, and at most times ignoring the differences between two. In this regard, we should not presume that strategies and policies work as strategists wants them to and we should be open to evaluate the differences between the intent and the outcome. In the present study, we focused on what the plan tried to achieve and, we referred to certain reforms, and relevant statistical numbers as evaluate consequences of the plan.

Source of data

We analysed the document named ‘Long-Term Strategy and 8th Five Year Development Plan’, published in 2000 as its primary source of data. We chose this plan for two reasons. First, the plan has been serving as a blueprint for neoliberalisation of Turkey. Second reason was, unlike other development plans, that the plan had a special part in which long term strategy of the Turkish government was described.

The plan was prepared by the State Planning Organisation and legislated by the National Grand Assembly of Turkey in 2000. It had two main parts. The first part described the development plan for 2001 to 2005, while the second part addressed long term strategies for the years between 2001 and 2023. The first part had 10 chapters, which were developments prior to the 8th five year development plan, basic targets and strategy for long-term development, basic targets, principles and policies of 8th five year development plan, macroeconomic policies, objectives and projections of 8th five year development plan, relations with the European Union, Turkey’s economic relations with countries in the region and with other countries, regional development objectives and policies, development objectives and policies related to social and economic sectors, enhancement of efficiency in public services and enhancement of efficiency in economy. The second part of the document, which we were primarily concerned with, detailed the long-term strategies of Turkey’s development.

Data analysis

In analysing data, we utilised tools provided by critical discourse analysis. The discourse analysis that we conducted here was not interested in the ‘true/hidden meanings’ of text. We were more interested in ‘statements not so much for what they say but what they do; that is, one question’s what the constitutive or political effects of saying this instead of that might be?’ (Graham, 2011: 667). We tracked down ‘statements’, not as linguistics elements but rather as ‘the simple inscription of what is said’ (Deleuze, 1988: 15), to see what functions emerged as a consequence of these statements.

Procedurally, after thorough readings of the document by the researchers, we determined the statements and the resulting functions. Then we classified these functions to demonstrate what the document desired to do and achieve. Our analysis showed that the document had three discursive processes with regard to remaking of childhood: childhood as cultural capital, childhood as correctional locus and childhood as labour. In the following parts, we first examined the logic of the development plan and later we described the discursive formations of childhood.

The 8th five year development plan and the long term strategic vision

Since the coup of 1980 in Turkey, development plans have been serving as important tools used for integration to global capitalism, formation of neoliberal policies (Ekiz and Somel, 2005) and reformation of society. From this perspective, the 8th development plan sought to create a society that could play along with the incoming neoliberal policies.

Item 160: 8th plan has been developed in period in which deep economic and social transformations are taking place in the world. Ensuring our country to make optimal use of possibilities that this transformation happening in the world requires a long-term development strategy (DPT, 2002: 21).

Item 162: It is the country’s economic and social structure has to be transformed through restructuring of the state, while preserving the unitary structure, raising the level of education and health in the society, improving the income distribution, strengthening scientific and technological capacity, developing new technologies, enhancing effectiveness in infrastructure services and protecting the environment (DPT, 2002: 21).

These items were located at the beginning of the second chapter in which basic targets and strategy for long term development were detailed. From these items to onwards, the document argued the necessity of developing policies to integrate to global capitalism and to promote private equities while preserving the nation-state and national values. Accordingly, the document imagined a society comprised of individuals who could go along with the neoliberal policies, were entrepreneurs, and embraced national and moral values. The new individual was the one who was capable, adaptable, docile and productive as required by the global capitalism.

An examination of the third chapter of the plan, where aims, principles and policies were elaborated, quickly revealed that the growth and integration to the global world were the main aims. In order for this to happen, the document proposed a radical transformation from social policies to economic ones.

Item 184. The European Union shall be one of the focal points in Turkey’s globalisation process (DPT, 2002: 25).

Item 186. The aim of education is to raise persons of the information age, who are devoted to the principles and reforms of Atatürk, who have assumed democratic values, have embodied the national culture but capable of interpreting different cultures, and having developed thinking, perception and problem solving. Through the improvement of the educational system, the need for qualified labour power necessary for economic development shall be met and competitiveness shall be acquired (DPT, 2002: 25–26).

Item 188. Arrangements shall be continued necessary for ensuring concentration of the state on its main functions, withdrawal from the field of production and through privatisation, and considering the transformations in the world (DPT, 2002: 26).

Item 194. The 8th Five-Year Development Plan shall be a fundamental instrument guiding the national efforts towards providing our people with the requirements of information society, in a period in which globalization affects economic and social life to a great extent (DPT, 2002: 26).

In this regard, the document advised privatisation and retraction of state from manufacturing, social services and development of a competitive market. The document claimed that a competitive economy required competitive labour force that would be possible only through education. Accordingly, educational system should be reconstituted with respect to global requirements while boosting national values.

The document actually was an argumentation of the necessity of neoliberal policies and redesign of the society with this respect. The plan placed a special focus on the redefinition of childhood and considered it as a crucial element in achieving fashioning of society.

Discursive formations of childhood

The development plan examined the process of reconstruction thoroughly and the planning was done accordingly. In this context, the Long-Term Strategy and 8th Five Year Development Plan projected to achieve the reconstruction via three discursive mechanisms that were related to remaking of childhood. The document operationalised childhood as cultural capital, correctional locus and as future and present labour.

Childhood as a cultural capital

The plan elaborated childhood as an important tool of the cultural capital, and a life-period to be invested for the sustainability of traditional values along with the founding values of Turkey, and in building a neoliberal life style.

In the document, education was positioned as the most important means of acculturation in reaching the targeted culture in childhood. The plan aimed to create the information age individual who ‘is dedicated to the principles and revolutions of Atatürk, democratic, libertarian, and dedicated to moral, internalized national culture. . .’ (DPT, 2002: 25). For this purpose, proposed educational policies were primarily concerned with the reformation of childhood and advised to start instilling these values as early as possible.

Item 688. Standards will be set up to eliminate differences between Institutions providing preschool education services. In order to be able to give education that is community-based, national, ethical and tied to moral values, making written, oral and visual educational programs will be encouraged (DPT, 2002: 84).

Item 869. Curriculum programs that will realize the good use of Turkish will be implemented in all levels of education starting from pre-school (DPT, 2002: 98).

The government attributed a particular importance to childhood to form the ideal society by using education as an instrument and considered childhood as an important subject of cultural capital (Millei, 2019). Meanwhile, the institution of family was loaded with a charge of important tasks by the government in order to sustain the culture (Can, 2019).

Item 45. Measures will be taken to help the family, which is the key element in protection and development of national and moral values, to adapt the changes and developments in the economic and social structure. The necessary measures will be taken to raise the level of physical and mental health of children, who are the promise of future, and to improve their quality of life (DPT, 2002: 223–224).

Just as Rose (1999) denoted ‘the modern child has become the focus of innumerable projects that purport to safeguard it from physical, sexual, or moral danger, to ensure its “normal” development, to actively promote certain capacities of attributes such as intelligence, educability and emotional stability’ (p.123). Childhood in this sense was an object of conduct of conduct; a mechanism made possible through pedagogy. Children have now been an important part of the destiny of the nation. ‘In different ways, at different times, and by many different routes varying from one section of society to another, the health, welfare, rearing of children have been linked in thought and practice to the destiny of the nation and responsibilities of the state’ (Rose, 1999: 123).

Children as future workers and soldiers have been ideal targets for aspirations of state. By constructing certain images of normality through pedagogical requirements, families voluntarily have been serving for the fulfilment of these aspirations (Aksoy and Eren Deniz, 2018). The family has been an important institution that has sustained its existence as a direct or indirect partner of government (Can, 2019). Placing a special importance on the institution of family and strengthening it to adjust the economic and social changes, enabled the government to construct the future of its own power (Lüküslü, 2016).

In a similar manner, the plan commissioned the institution of family to preserve and strengthen the national and moral values and considered childhood as a guarantee of the future image.

Item 821. In protection and development of national and moral values, in reinforcing national unity and integrity, strengthening family institution is essential (DPT, 2002: 103).

Item 822. Measures to help the family adjust to social and economic changes shall be taken and policies to strengthen ties and to try devotion among members of family shall be given emphasis (DPT, 2002: 103).

Item 868. In order to consolidate and strongly transfer the national values to the future generations, the education given at all the levels will be accompanied by arrangements to develop history, art and culture accumulation and consciousness (DPT, 2002: 107).

Item 869. Starting from the pre-school level, at all educational levels, the curricula shall be designed in a way to promote the correct usage of the Turkish language (DPT, 2002: 107).

The development plan articulated childhood as a crucial period in harvesting the nationalist-conservative values defined within neoliberal lines. Childhood was considered as a key investment tool for the future, to build a society that was in line with the cultural values adopted by the neoliberal government (Lüküslü, 2016). Apart from the acculturation of child, childhood appeared as a target of correctional activities.

Correctional activities and childhood

Disciplination of the society has been considered as a process in which government has used various processes to maintain power and regulation (Gambetti, 2008). Institutions (prisons, schools, government departments, families, etc.) that allowed individual to position themselves in society with the ability to comply with the politics of power (normalisation) have been redesigned under the supervision of power (Foucault, 1977). In this regard, the plan targeted childhood to create and sustain a disciplinary society.

The plan placed an emphasis on investments in this direction, which were to be made through three institutions such as family, jail-detention centre and school.

Item 841. With a view to improve life quality of children, reasons preventing children benefit from health care services shall be removed (DPT, 2002: 105).

Item 842. Acting from the principle that family is the ideal and priority environment in caring and raising a child, in order to protect and raise disabled children in need of protection within their family environment, social support programs towards family shall be given emphasis (DPT, 2002: 105).

Item 844. In order to prevent children from working, impediments before the educational opportunities shall be eliminated, child population at the age of compulsory education ensured to be embraced by the education system and an education system to increase demand for vocational technical education shall be constituted. In the long term, children shall be eliminated from working life entirely (DPT, 2002: 105).

The plan stated that the opportunities expected to be presented to children were not presented equally to all children, because of this inequality, the children were turning into unqualified labour and becoming a risk for power in the long run by failing to adapt to the system (Lüküslü, 2016). It seemed that a mission has been put in place to enable social rehabilitation to be carried out in educational institutions (schools) in order to remove this risk and achieve social harmony. It was aimed to enable social rehabilitation and discipline to be effective, to support developmental competencies needed by children in both formal or in non-formal education institutions and to maintain religious information and informing in order to keep children on conservative lines instead of scientific equipment. In this regard, family appeared as an agent to achieve these ends (Aksoy and Eren Deniz, 2018).

The family could be considered as the institution in which the power was closest to the individual (Can, 2019). Power could carry out its ideological expectations through the family for the organisation of society.

Item 821. Strengthening the family enterprise is essential in the preservation and development of national and spiritual values, consolidation of national unity and solidarity (DPT, 2002: 94).

The plan aimed to strengthen the family in order to sustain the status quo in a conservative line. Meeting these ideological needs was carried out directly through the childhood. In this context, the government was rearranging and disciplining society via family.

Item 670. All children who are out of educational system could not be included in the scope of apprenticeship education. Children who are out of formal and adult education system work under inconvenient conditions both economically and socially, and their mental and physical health is affected adversely. Therefore, the use of human resources has been unproductive. Religious knowledge and information which is the basic right and need for the human being shall be continued to be given at formal and non-formal institutes (DPT, 2002: 88).

The formation of the disciplinary society was, of course, not only created through institutions such as education and family. Unwanted processes that could cause social deformation were aimed to take under control by some means of oppression. The development plan assessed that all the factors that could endanger social control as ‘threats’ for the ideal society and provided mechanisms to eliminate theses dangers.

Item 837. The problem of children who are in conflict with law maintains its importance. Formation of policies with a view to prevent children to commit crime, establishment of a police department for children, construction of correction institutions and reformatories for children in sufficient number and quality, employment of qualified staff in the field of child within the body of child correction institutions, reformatories, Security and Gendarmerie units, increasing the number of child courts by restructuring as envisaged on the Law No: 2253 and development of programs in order to regain children into the society are required (DPT, 2002: 104).

Item 843. Causes directing children towards crime, streets, working and drug addiction shall be eliminated; starting from the regions in which child crime is intense, new child courts shall be established; the number of child correction institutions and reformatories shall be increased to enable them stay in separate environments from adults while they are under arrest or sentenced (DPT, 2002: 105).

The plan promised to abolish the reasons that lead children to crime. Apparently, the way to this was to establish new child courts and build new detention centres. The plan revealed that attitudes and behaviours of children that were in conflict with the social norms defined by power should be punished, by taking children away from the social. Hence, it would be possible to ‘protect society from children’.

The plan and strategies described in the text have been playing an imperative role in creation of a disciplinary society and they also acted as significant tools of providing a legitimate space for neoliberal policies of the government. As a matter of fact, the number of juvenile convicts as of 2017 was four times higher than the number in 2000. According to statistics presented by the ministry of justice on its website, there had been 253 juvenile convicts in 2000 whereas the number was 1003 as of 2017. The number for all convicts was even more striking. The number of total convicts including children in 2000 was 50.628 whereas in 2018 it was more than five times higher, reaching to 264.842, per TUIK. According to news item appeared on Euronews (2019), population in prisons was 286.000 in 2019. Same news item revealed the number of juvenile convicts as 2500. It seemed that the protection of society had been intensified since the plan launched. On the other hand, more refined techniques of discipline have been put into work within the educational settings.

After the launch of the plan, the Turkish Education System has been reformed several times and going under a substantial transformation. The major modification came into place in 2005 with the curriculum reform that paved the way for a neoliberal cultural transformation of the system (Toprak, 2015). Accordingly, the system would be student-oriented and constructivist. The discourse of student-centred learning corresponded to a new understanding of discipline. Until the curriculum reform, the system had defined the notion of discipline and had described procedures and techniques as a separate entity. For example, the disciplinary code of 1971 articulated the matter as a penal problem (Ministry of National Education [MoNE], 1971). The code was filled with penal words like punishment (89 times), crime (25 times), criminal student (9 times) and criminal (10 times).

On the other hand, there is not any code describing disciplinary mechanisms now. What was disciplinary code had turned into ‘the assessment of student behaviours’. The new notion of discipline has elaborated the matter as something to be internalised by students. It has been about an observing, a conducting and a controlling process backed up by close-circuit surveillance systems, since then. Just as Jeremy Bentham’s panoptical model of prison, schools have been panoptical and students have been expected to conduct themselves. The last discursive process regarding childhood was about turning children into present and future labour.

Childhood as present and future labour

The second part of the plan where strategies of integration to global capitalism were described imagined Turkey as a global power on her 100th foundation year (DPT, 2002). The plan detailed the requirement of remaking of individuals and proposed mechanisms to achieve the remaking.

Item 764. The main objective is to raise manpower equipped with information and skills required by information society, to be utilized productively and to be given an improved quality of life (DPT, 2002: 89).

The Item 194 advised the promotion of individual who had become a necessity as a result of the needs of the new millennium. The plan wanted to create a nationalistic and conservative individual who was capable of meeting the needs of global capital. In order to this happen, the plan urged the transformation of educational system that was in line with the needs of the new times.

Item 42. The development of the education system will continue to meet the needs of the economy’s qualified workforce and increase international competitiveness. In order to ensure that the education system and the labour market work effectively and productively, a Professional Standards Examination and Certification System will be established (DPT, 2002: 223).

Item 765. The education system will be developed to meet the needs of the economy and the qualified society’s need of quality labour force in terms of quantity and quality (DPT, 2002: 97).

Item 765. Education system shall be improved to meet the need of qualified manpower of economy in required number and quality (DPT, 2002: 97).

Item 766. The educational level of labour force shall be improved as to increase international competitiveness and opportunities of continuing training parallel with business life shall be strengthened (DPT, 2002: 97).

The plan desired a structural transformation in education system for an effective implementation of neoliberal policies. In this regard schools were foremost sites of transformation. The plan, which valued citizens as a strategic source (DPT, 2002: 129), stated that the formation of child and schooling should start as early as possible.

Accordingly, the new system, from early education to higher education, should produce the individual that the capital needed in its global competition. The plan devoted a special interest in vocational education for developing qualified intermediate labour, which the capital needed desperately. The 4+4+4 reform was an important step taken in this direction in 2012. The reform was intended to expand the compulsory education to 12 years (Yılmaz, 2017). Yet statistical data has been indicating that the number of students not continuing to regular high school has been on a steady rise. Instead, students have been attending open education high school in growing numbers (Ozdoğan, 2019).

When these students attended a school where physical presence was not required, they have been working apparently (Susanli et al., 2016). According to a report published by the country’s one of largest labour unions, DISK, the number of illegal child labourers was 709.000 whereas the number was 601.000 before the reform. Actually, the plan admitted the problem and indicated that ‘in the long term, children shall be eliminated from working life entirely’ (DPT, 2002: 105). Yet, the plan proposed mechanism for legalisation of child labour.

Item 767. Vocational technical education shall be improved within formal and adult education in a flexible and dynamic manner and in close relation with business life (DPT, 2002: 97).

Item 768. New organizational models shall be developed to enable functional cooperation with business life in order to attain more effective and productive vocational and technical education (DPT, 2002: 97).

In a similar manner, according to a report of DISK (2017) the number of children who worked legally as apprentices and interns was 1.650.000 as of May 2017, whereas it was slightly over 400.000 before the reform. These numbers actually showed that children were not only imagined as future workers, but also have been used as present cheap-labour force.

Conclusion and discussion

The present study has investigated the role of development plan in discursive formation of society and childhood. Due to structural characteristics of development plans, they have the power to create effect since they are binding for public sector and advising for private sector. Given that future policies procedurally follow and refer to development plans, they are the backbone texts that produce norms, values and the background stage of desired transformation.

While we are not claiming that these desires are automatically translated into the daily life, the efforts to create norms and values produce discursive impacts such as objectification of society as a field to be fashioned, and reconstitution of childhood as a site of redefinition and reproduction of norms and values.

Neoliberalism as the strategic logic of 21st capitalism has been creating various effects on wide range fields of human conduct. Far from being even and consistent, it has been using contradictory technics and strategies along different geographies. Yet, one thing has remained constant about it; neoliberalism has used whatever tools available to intervene existing systems in order to create mechanisms for ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Finn et al., 2010; Harvey, 2005), eradication of the left hand of the state (Bourdieu, 1998), and a cultural transformation of the systems (Kingfisher, 2002).

We are claiming that in the Turkish case, childhood has been an important site and tool of neoliberal transformation as evident in the 8th Five Year Development Plan and Long-Term Strategy document.

The 8th Five Year Development Plan and the Long-Term Strategy document aimed to create docile bodies by colonising childhood as a present and future agent who were readily submissive to neoliberal policies and practices. As an object of neoliberal transformation, the submissive agent allowed the power to expand its hegemony while making it almost impossible for individuals to become participating active citizens who had the capacity produce counter-effects on neoliberalisation of public services like education, health, infrastructure and transportation. In this regard, the document by producing consent and legitimacy and presenting neoliberalism as the only social regulator depoliticised neoliberal normalisation.

The document as a means of neoliberal normalisation defined and advises mechanisms of protecting and supporting private entrepreneurship while also preserving and enhancing nation-state and national values. The document envisioned a docile and somehow entrepreneur agent who was submissive to neoliberal policies, and naturalised national and spiritual and moral values (Solar, 2015). Fittingly, the process of submission started with the redefinition of childhood all of which implying a transition from the child of the state (Bumin, 2013) to the child of the capital.

Discourses of childhood concerning the rebuild of society within the document presumed a three-way instrumentalisations of childhood. These discursive instrumentalisations of childhood prescribed in the document redefined and reshaped childhood as an agent of cultural transformation, a locus of disciplination of society and an object of present and prospective flexible labour.

The document imagined childhood as a vital site of reproduction of a nationalistic and conservative society and the backbone of new type of individual that the capital needed. Öztan (2012) argued that historically, childhood in Turkey was articulated in conservative and militarist lines and that the ideal childhood was reproduced parallel to ideological transformations of Turkey. Since 1980, neoliberal policies have come to redefine the conceptualisation of childhood and education and family has been redesigned to rediscover childhood in line with these policies (Çanakçı, 2017). Toran and Hacıfazlıoğlu (2020) in their research of the rediscovery of school and family as institutions of construction of childhood indicated that both teachers and parents considered children as the bearers of cultural norms and values and the future of the country.

Conceptualising children in similar lines, the document necessitated competitive, productive, entrepreneurial agents for the future of the country (Ball, 2010; Wardman, 2016). The plan advised such a kind of transformation. Children were regarded as tools of investment for their families and their government. ‘They are an economic asset to their households’ production and reproduction and a means of securing the economic future for their parents and other members of the extended family’ (Katz, 2008: 9).

The cultural transformation that the document envisioned had an unexpected emphasis. The document, while aiming the reconstitute society placed a special focus on discipline, which was seen as a necessary mechanism made possible through a triad of family, school and prison. The new child was disciplined different than once s/he had been. The new form of discipline used more refined techniques aiming to configure what the child thought and self-control. Students were expected take control in their own discipline. If not, there were repercussions as evident in the document, which promised increasing the number of correctional institutions for minors.

Beyond that, it has been well documented that conservative, militarist and submissive articulations were abundant in the curriculum; and children faced emotional and corporal punishment in the case of ‘unwanted behaviour’ in the family space (Eslen-Ziya and Erhart, 2013; Öztan, 2012; Toran and Hacıfazlıoğlu, 2020; Yağcıoğlu, 2012). Childhood as an intensely governed sector of life, not only has become the agent of future imagination but also a source of cheap labour whose use optimised through mechanisms of self-control.

The last change we observed was about the meaning and use of childhood. Children were no longer children in the new schema. They were apprentices whose labour was cheaply sold in the marketplace. On the one hand, the new policy agenda sought out a labour-free global order (Burman, 1994; Nieuwenhuys, 2007), the government, in the Turkish schema, willingly marketed childhood. The Turkish case was unique in the sense that it did not only places children as investments for future economic productivity (Sims, 2017: 1), but also has been using them as a cheap, a useful and present labour.

The document pictured an educational model that would raise children for future professions in order to meet the capital’s need of quality labour. In the context of the document, childhood was valued in terms of its capacity to meet capital’s need of labour (Devine and Luttrell, 2013; Gill-Peterson, 2015). Children were imagined as a future investment of families and school (Toran and Hacıfazlıoğlu, 2020). It has been well documented that geographies going through neoliberalisation used children both as cheap labour and future labour (LeBaron and Ayers, 2013). This is the precise reason we see claim-makers advocating reformation of educational system to scaffold social and emotional abilities of children in order to prepare them for the new industrial revolution (Stuart, 2018; TUSIAD, 2019).

We claim that the document we analysed was a road map to neoliberalisation of Turkey and childhood was articulated in parallel lines. Childhood once again appeared as a governmentality tool which was in the need of constant reformation in order to serve the role prescribed for it.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Mehmet Toran

Ziya Toprak

Notes

Author biographies

Mehmet Toran is an associate professor of early childhood studies at Istanbul Kultur University. His research deals mainly with early childhood education curricula, early childhood education approaches, early childhood education policy, poverty and childhood, and critical pedagogy.

Ziya Toprak is a researcher at The Centre for Educational Policy Research. His resarch interests are impact of globalization on education and criticial discourse analysis in educational settings.

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