We aim to analyze Beycioglu’s scholarship in SJL through his methodology and his unique construction of the concept. Kadir Beycioglu dedicated his scholarship to building equitable educational provisions at all levels in Turkey and the world. Although his scholarship does not exclusively focus on social justice leadership (SJL), it forms the essence of his advocacy for inclusive educational practices in Turkish society (Arar et al., 2017). His scholarship on SJL uniquely reflects an elegant harmony of international literature with the social, cultural, historical, political, and educational facts of Turkey. First, in his methodology, he built his arguments on the cultural heritage of Turkey. However, the cultural heritage of Turkey is not limited to the currently dominant culture as Beycioglu embraced all citizens existed in the geography of Turkey. In his recent work, Beycioglu demonstrated how social justice has been a core concern of Turkey’s geography since ancient times through mythology. Secondly, Beycioglu’s scholarship is related to the link between democracy and school leadership. Beycioglu centers democracy and democratic school structures as one of the pillars of his understanding. Democratic practices inspired his social justice leadership as dialogue, participative decision making and combining intellectual, spiritual, ethical, emotional, aesthetic, and physical development form the premise of his SJL understanding (Beycioglu, 2020). The third unique characteristic of Beycioglu’s social justice leadership is its activist nature. Although Beycioglu did not belong to the mainstream sources of disparity, he owned the problems of disadvantaged groups and advocated their rights. He did not study social justice leadership as a topic of an academic career. but as his lifetime concern. He tried to understand the social, economic, and political bases of injustices, advocated the rights of disadvantaged groups and worked for equity in all domains of life. In Miller’s (2020) typology of educational leaders tackling racism, Beycioglu definitely falls under deliberate activism, acknowledging all sources of marginalization and committing to make the source of marginalization visible to authorities so that more resources can be drawn to the marginalized groups. All in all, he constructed a SJL understanding, largely shaped by synthesizing international literature with local historical, economic, politician and educational realities. The resulting concepts and practices have contributed to build initial nuances of Turkish understanding of social justice. In that sense, he inspired numerous young researchers to work on social justice both as a conceptual base and as a field of practice.

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