The Politics of the ICT4ED (Fatih) Project in Turkey

Abstract

Information and communications technology (ICT) is crucial in any contemporary society, especially if its online presence is to be widely significant, but, in a national context, it is important to investigate whether there is a compelling ICT ‘politic’ in the education sector in Turkey. This study specifically focuses on the ICT for Educational Development (ICT4ED) (Fatih) project, valued at US$8 billion, which is an embodiment of future educational reform in centralist Turkey. The study investigates the level of policy-making capacity within the scope of the Fatih project, which promises to fully integrate ICT into education in order to solve many educational issues, such as establishing entrepreneurialism in education, improving ICT sectors, exporting educational services to other nations for profit, and, ultimately, meeting the overarching purpose of Turkey becoming a competitive nation. The discourse of the government is to explore technological opportunities within education in order to create new ‘profitable’ avenues that conceive education as a ‘commodity’ and a ‘private good’, which is another feature of fragmented centralisation through public-private partnership(s) for both covert and overt privatisations. While the Fatih project defines the future as having new, ‘fully integrated ICT in education’, this study presents three main normative arguments — with regard to the project's political execution, technical development and philosophical conception — to refute its objectives and highlight that it is destined to fail, and to suggest what urgent matters the ICT4ED politic should highlight in future education.