The American College for Girls in Istanbul positioned itself in both Turkey and the U.S. as enthusiastic supporter of Republican social reform. In the 1924 Annual Report, College President Patrick congratulated the new government on achieving its "legal right of possession"; later she described the Turks as behaving just as Americans would, modeling themselves on the "people of the United States in 1776" who also "desired freedom to develop in their own way" (Under Five Sultans, 1929). American media echoed Patrick's approval of Turkey's new status, depicting Turkey in the 1920s as a proto-United States, following America's path towards democracy and freedom. One article noted, the "self-determined Turk . . . declared his independence," and Ismet Pasha announced, "We have broken completely with every Turkish tradition" (NYT May 4, 1924). Overturning Turkish "traditions" fascinated Americans, and Patrick argued that her College's impact on young women was integral to Turkey's social revolution. Indeed, if "A Complete Mental Revolution Has Apparently Taken Place" in Turkey (NYT 9 Jan 1927), she was prepared to claim responsibility. She asserted that the College had an ascendant role in "this startling period of Turkish history" and had already paved the way for Mustafa Kemal's "new national thinking" (Patrick, Bosporus Adventure, 1934, p. 3). Moreover, the American media reflected Patrick's belief that Turkish and American psyches followed the same path: like Westerners, Turks were "getting nerves" as the suicide rate rose among educated young men frustrated at the lack of good jobs; educated women, however, blossomed under the new regime, energized by new opportunities in "commercial and industrial life" ((NYT Mar 25, 1928). Such women, like the College's own graduates, symbolized Turkey's march into modernity; indeed, the College's favorite alumnae, Halide Edib ("Turkey's Fiery Joan of Arc," NYT Nov. 26, 1922), appeared frequently in print and in person in the U.S. in the 1920s to promote Turkey's social and political advances. This paper will examine how both the American College and American popular media perceived a "mental" similarity between Turkey and the U.S., and viewed American influence as essential to Turkey's revolution and future social change. The American College for Girls, under Patrick's guidance, morphed smoothly from its Protestant origins to a new kind of modernizing mission. In this vision of its project, the College portrayed itself as an essential component of the new Republic, which seemed poised to mimic American styles of government, society, and culture.

Following worldwide trends of change in the realms of schooling and citizenship-building that were geared towards making education more accessible, nineteenth century Ottoman rulers sought to implement similar policies. Reformers of the Porte aimed to realize this objective through the establishment of a centralized school system for all children of the empire. This evolution of the state as educator hypothetically enabled it to assume and wield enormous power, as the state declared its right to intervene pedagogically in the life of every child within its domains. The Ottoman reformist elite came to view universal education as both an essential service and an indispensable strategy in dealing with dilemmas of modernization, social unrest, and territorial loss. The Ottoman state launched this campaign of reform with the 1869 Education Act, a law that made schooling compulsory for both boys and girls. In this context, Istanbul became the site for experimenting with many of education-related initiatives that the empire would attempt to institute subsequently in its peripheries. Various institutions, from primary to post-primary, industrial, and teacher-training schools, were established specifically for the education of girls and women. Drawing on recent scholarship that explores the governmentality of education, this paper addresses Ottoman intentions and methods, as well as their outcomes. The actual results of these policies were reflected not only the empire's attempts to extend governance to its populations but also the limitations of the empire in terms of its citizenship-building ideologies, constraints imposed by internal and foreign competitors, and the fiscal restrictions in its political economy. Confronted by these limitations, schooling and vocational training also came to be viewed as essential steps towards the wider industrialization that the Ottoman economy needed to foster in order to compete effectively with both domestic and foreign rivals. In this sense, education was sometimes viewed almost as the panacea that might render the empire an opportunity to socialize its children at early ages so that they would become loyal citizens who would be integrated with other community members and so they eventually could also make vocational and fiscal contributions that would enhance the empire's developmental and economic health. Identifying girls' and women's educations as central components within this educational agenda, this paper examines Ottoman reformists' rationalizations of such interventions, the methods that they employed to bring girls and women into the folds of modernization, and the effects of such reforms in terms of gender, family, and nation.

Following a long debate on alphabet reform by (Ottoman) Turkish intellectuals and modernist reformers since the Tanzimat period, the Turkish parliament adopted a new Latin based alphabet in November 1928 to replace the Arabic letters "in order to save the nation from illiteracy and ignorance". The Alphabet reform left the state and its citizens with an enormous task of teaching and learning a new script. Given high levels of illiteracy--the overall literacy rate was 8.16 % according to the 1927 census--for the majority of the citizens learning the new alphabet meant learning to read and write for the first time. While the regular school system assumed the task of teaching children the new script, shortly after the Alphabet law the state embarked upon a comprehensive education project under the title Millet Mektepleri, or Nation's Schools, that aimed at spreading literacy and teaching the new alphabet to adult Turkish citizens simultaneously. Drawing on the existing scholarship (such as Bilal simiir's) as well as memoirs, oral interviews -which I conducted in 2002 and 2003--and periodical publications such as the Ministry of Education's weekly magazine Halk, this paper explores the goals, the practice, and the consequences of the Millet Mektepleri. It argues that in addition to the primary goal of mass literacy, which was a fundamental requirement for the nation's progress and its march toward modernity, the Nation's Schools contributed towards the creation of a national culture in a number of ways: These classes would teach citizens about subjects such as history, geography and citizenship. Increased literacy in the new alphabet would also work towards the elimination of regional dialects and the building of a shared colloquial Turkish. Furthermore, Millet Mektepleri would also help toward the dissemination of Turkish as a spoken language among communities that did not speak Turkish at a time when the ability and willingness to speak Turkish became an important requirement for full membership in the Turkish national community. The paper also examines the constraints and the failures of the Millet Mektepleri program, especially in its attempts to reach women citizens, who had to be educated in order to be able to fully participate in national life.