Özet:

In order for the average learner to become a successful communicator in a world where intercultural interactions are increasing, one needs to develop an awareness of not only the target culture but also his own culture and the cultures of different countries. Also, it is a matter of concern which cultures and to what extent they are being represented in the Turkish as a foreign language coursebooks, for they are the carriers of the cultural content as well. In contrast to the previous studies focusing on the presentation of the Turkish cultural elements, this study categorised the cultural items in Yeni Hitit 3 (2012) according to Kachru’s (1985) “three circles” model, compared the data with the number of foreign students from Student Selection and Placement Centre’s (OSYM), and obtained the following results from the lexical-topical analyses: While the inner circle, where Turkish is spoken as a native language, occupied 43%, and the outer circle, where Turkish is treated as an important language beside the native language of learners, took up 1% of the whole cultural plane, the expanding circle, where Turkish is taught as a foreign language, got hold of the remaining 56% on its own. In addition, universal topics were found to be the most frequently-cited (53%), and followed by topics related to the expanding (29%) and inner circles (9%), along with other topics (7%), whereas the outer circle received the least topical focus (2%). Consequently, although the target language culture (the Turkish culture) was adequately represented, the cultures of the other Turkic groups were almost ignored and the cultures of different countries learning Turkish as a foreign language were the most varied and densely-populated. However, among the countries of the expanding circle , the Anglo-American culture, rather than the cultures of the neighbouring countries, was the dominant culture. When the distribution of the cultural elements was evaluated with the percentages of foreign students from the outer and expanding circles, it was revealed that the Turkish as a foreign language coursebooks did not take into consideration the cultural backgrounds of the audience and choose the culture-loaded texts systematically, either.

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