IB TITC explained: Turkey in the 20th Century and how it is assessed
TITC combines history, geography and sociology. Paper 1 and Paper 2 are 30% each; the 2,000-word internal assessment carries 40% of the grade.
TITC stands for Turkey in the 20th Century. It is a national syllabus taken by IB Diploma students at IB schools across Türkiye, and it satisfies the Turkish national curriculum requirement inside the Diploma Programme. It is not a language subject: it combines history, geography and sociology in a single programme, and questions in both examination papers draw on all three at once.
How TITC is assessed
| Component | Weight | Duration | What it tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 | 30% | 1 hour 30 minutes | Topics 1-3; three compulsory structured questions based on documents, statistics and graphs |
| Paper 2 | 30% | 1 hour 30 minutes | Topics 4-6; two extended-response questions from one topic of your choice |
| Internal assessment | 40% | ~20 hours | A 2,000-word research paper combining at least two of the three disciplines |
The detail most students miss: the internal assessment is the single heaviest component. Two fifths of the grade is decided during the year, not in the exam hall.
The six topics, and which paper they sit in
- Paper 1 — Topic 1: Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century
- Paper 1 — Topic 2: The founding years of the Republic (1923-1945)
- Paper 1 — Topic 3: Global change between the wars and its effect on Turkey (1918-1939)
- Paper 2 — Topic 4: The Second World War and Turkey under pressure
- Paper 2 — Topic 5: Reconstruction, democracy and regional developments (1945-1985)
- Paper 2 — Topic 6: The effects of globalisation and dialogue with Europe (1985-2000)
This split shapes revision directly. Because Paper 2 asks you to choose one topic, you do not need all three of the later topics at equal depth — but the topic you do choose has to be deep enough to answer from all three disciplines.
What separates a mid-band answer from a top-band one
The most common way to lose marks in TITC is to answer a history question with history alone. The mark scheme rewards geographical concepts and case studies, and sociological framing, as separate credit. A strong answer names the discipline it is drawing on and moves between them deliberately:
- Read the command term first. "Explain", "compare" and "evaluate" call for different answer shapes; the same document set can be asked three ways.
- Interrogate the source, not just the content. Who produced it, when, and whose perspective does it carry? Document questions award marks for provenance and limitation, not only for what the document says.
- Track your disciplines in the margin. If a paragraph uses only one, the answer is incomplete by design.
The internal assessment: where the research question decides the grade
The IA must combine at least two disciplines, and the most common mistake is to build a single-discipline question and bolt the second on afterwards. "Agricultural policy under Menderes" is a history question. "The effect of agricultural policy under Menderes on rural-to-urban migration in Çukurova" forces history, geography and sociology to work together — and a 2,000-word limit rewards a narrow, well-built question over a broad one.
Your teacher sees one draft and gives feedback on it; what you submit after that is final. Producing that first draft early is the highest-return decision available in this course.
What to study when you have no past papers
Past papers are IBO copyright material and the legitimate route to them is your school's IB coordinator or its Programme Resource Centre account. Copies circulating online may be out of date and carry academic-honesty risk. Without them you can still study:
- The command terms and the answer length each one expects
- One case study per discipline for each of the six topics
- A fixed document-reading routine: source, date, perspective, limitation
- Five candidate IA research questions that genuinely cross two disciplines
For one-to-one support on any TITC component, see our IB TITC tutoring page. We do not write your work; you get draft reading and rubric-based feedback.