Jewish Schools from the Ottoman State to the Republic: Educational Centralization and Institutional Restructuring

Abstract

This study examines how Jewish schools, which operated within a community-based framework during the Ottoman period, were repositioned within the Republic’s centralized educational order following Tevhid-i Tedrisat (The Law on the Unification of Education) dated 3 March 1924. Rather than treating this transformation solely as the direct consequence of the law itself, the study considers it in conjunction with subsequent legislation, administrative practices, demographic contraction, migration, and changing patterns of school preference. The research draws on historical analysis and document review within a qualitative paradigm, evaluating legislative texts, educational regulations, statistical indicators, and the relevant literature comparatively. The findings indicate that Jewish schools were brought under a tighter regime of ministerial oversight and that communal discretion over school administration, staffing, and curriculum was in practice narrowed. The French-centered educational legacy of the Alliance Israélite Universelle was transformed as Turkish was incorporated into the curriculum; however, this transformation did not proceed linearly, and French long retained a prestigious and pedagogically privileged position within Jewish education. The long-term contraction of Jewish schools must be assessed within the composite interaction between state centralization, demographic decline, migration, and families’ school preferences. The study therefore interprets this transformation through a multi-causal rather than a mono-causal framework.