ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of early literacy education, with a focus primarily on Turkey, but including the Balkan countries as well. The focus is on Turkey as a case study since it plays a critical role bridging Europe and the Middle East. The chapter provides a review of policy and practice in preschool education, along with the key research concerned with early learning outcomes for Turkish children. It reviews early literacy education in relation to each country's educational policies. In many of the countries reviewed in the chapter, there are large minorities who are caught between the aspiration of passing on their own ethnic linguistic capacities to new generations and the pragmatics of being able to speak the language of the majority population in the country. The chapter summarizes how this has worked out with regards to Turkey and the minority populations living there.
