This paper investigates the impact of the retrenchment measures in education in Turkey on teachers. The recent reforms informed by new public management thinking have diversified the employment regime, largely leading to proleterianisation of teachers in Turkey. Increasing size of the reserve army of teachers, along with those reforms, have radically changed the face of a profession that has traditionally been a public one for decades. The post-1980 reforms were a huge blow to the status and salaries of the public sector teachers, once compared with those of other public servants. The reforms involved introduction of “contract teachers”, to work along with the tenured teachers. Later came diversification of the tenured teachers’ official status as “head-teachers”, “specialist teachers” and “plain teachers”. This has contributed to the emergence of a highly unequal employment regime for teachers, with an uneven payment, social security and tenure system. Due to the worsening working conditions in the public sector, and the introduction of a highly selective exam-based public personnel hiring scheme, the fresh graduates of the education faculties are increasingly employed in the private tutoring schools (established to prepare the high school students for a highly selective National University Entrance Examination) offering much worse employment conditions. Given this context, this paper will look at how teachers’ perception of the state, of their own profession, and of their own workplace are diversified around along those different employment categories. The paper aims to interpret the findings of a field research which is being designed at the moment.
