Unification of education, ethnic diversity, and literacy in the early Turkish Republic

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2025.2450331

This paper examines the impact of language and education policies on human capital accumulation during the nation-building process in the early Turkish Republic and tests whether ethnic composition, particularly the strong presence of a Kurdish population, had an adverse effect on literacy rates, using a novel district-level data set in Turkey between 1927 and 1945. It shows that literacy rates diverged between western and eastern districts and the change in literacy rates were significantly slower in regions with a larger Kurdish minority population. There is also evidence that in districts where state presence was strong literacy rates increased faster, confirming the importance of state capacity. The paper also considers the impact of population movements that occurred before the establishment of the Republic and finds higher growth of literacy rates in districts where non-Muslim minorities used to live.