The Republic of Turkey Ankara University Graduate
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THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE TURKS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH TRAVEL WRITING ON ASIA MINOR PhD THESIS VEYSEL İŞÇİ Ankara, 2020 THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE TURKS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH TRAVEL WRITING ON ASIA MINOR PhD THESIS VEYSEL İŞÇİ Supervisor Assoc. Prof. Sıla ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ Ankara, 2020 THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY ANKARA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE TURKS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH TRAVEL WRITING ON ASIA MINOR PhD THESIS VEYSEL İŞÇİ Supervisor Assoc. Prof. Sıla ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ Examining Committee Members Title, Name and Surname Signature 1 – Prof. Mine ÖZYURT KILIÇ …………… 2 – Assoc. Prof. Sıla ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ …………… 3 – Assoc. Prof. Zeynep ATAYURT FENGE …………… 4 – Dr. Nazli GÜNDÜZ …………… 5 – Dr. Nisa Harika GÜZEL KÖŞKER …………… Examination Date: 13th July, 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my distinguished supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Sıla ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ, for her scholarly guidance and support that she has offered while I have been writing this PhD thesis. I must say that, without her insightful aid and substantial contribution, I would not be able to complete this doctoral study. I wish to extend my thanks to my previous supervisors, Prof. Gerald MacLean and Prof. Dr. Ufuk EGE UYGUR for their kind help and support. I also need to thank the members of thesis monitoring committee, Dr. Nazli GÜNDÜZ and Dr. Nisa Harika GÜZEL KÖŞKER for the valuable feedback that they have provided at committee meetings. I am also grateful to Dr. Nazmiye GÜREL CENNETKUŞU, without whose encouragement I would have never been able to start this journey. I would like to express a special thank to TUBITAK BIDEB (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Department of Supporting Scholars) for the scholarship that they granted over a course of three years under the scheme called “2211 – General Scholarship Programmes for National Doctoral Studies”. Finally, I wish to express my huge debt and gratitude to my wife Büşra who has demonstrated great patience and tolerance when I have been busy in studying for this thesis. I dedicate this PhD thesis to my son Deniz Enes for whom I wish all the best throughout all his life. i TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 – The Development of Travel Writing as a Literary Genre in Britain and British Travel Writing on Turkey ....................................................................... 10 1.1. The Emergence and Development of British Travel Writing as a Literary Genre .................................................................................................................................... 10 1.2. Theories on the Representation of the East in Travel Literature ......................... 24 1.3. Studies on British Travel Writing: Travels to the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey ..................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 2 – Imperialist Travel Writing on Southwest Turkey in the Late Ottoman Period (18th and 19th Centuries) .................................................................................. 48 2.1. Richard Chandler’s Travels in Asia Minor, or an Account of a Tour Made at the Expense of the Society of Dilettanti (1776) ................................................................ 55 2.2. Charles Fellows’ A Journal Written During an Excursion in Asia Minor (1838) and The Xanthian Marbles: Their Acquisition and Transition to England (1842) .... 71 Chapter 3 – Travel Writing on Southwest Turkey after the Foundation of the Republic of Turkey (Post-1923) .................................................................................. 86 3.1. Harold Armstrong’s Turkey and Syria Reborn: A Record of Two Years of Travel (1930) .......................................................................................................................... 99 3.2. Freya Stark’s The Lycian Shore: A Turkish Odyssey (1956) ............................. 111 3.3. Patrick Kinross’ Europa Minor: Journeys in Coastal Turkey (1956) ............... 121 Chapter IV – Contemporary British Travel Writing on Southwest Turkey (Late 20th Century) ............................................................................................................... 134 ii 4.1. Nancy Phelan’s Welcome The Wayfarer: A Traveller in Modern Turkey (1965) .................................................................................................................................. 145 4.2. Richard Percival Lister’s Turkey Observed (1967) ........................................... 159 4.3. Craig Mair’s A Time in Turkey (1973) ............................................................... 168 4.4. Brian Sewell’s South from Ephesus: Travels Through Aegean Turkey (1988) . 179 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 196 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 208 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................... 215 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ 223 ÖZET ........................................................................................................................... 225 1 INTRODUCTION In his book The Norton Book of Travel (1987), Paul Fussell argues that, after the great Renaissance age of colonial exploration and expansion, a systematic empiricism made travelling through the earth and seeing new and different things “something like an obligation for the person conscientious about developing the mind and accumulating knowledge” (129). Therefore, a new notion of travelling through Europe for educational purposes, which is called the Grand Tour, emerged in Europe in the late seventeenth century and became popular among young men of the ruling classes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to Thomas Nugent, the entire purpose of the Grand Tour was “to form the complete gentleman” (xi). In the essay “The Grand Tour and After (1660–1840)”, James Buzard argues that, in these Tours, the desirable or even quasi-obligatory destinations, where the appropriate kind of experience was to be acquired, were Paris and Italy (41). Buzard further suggest that while France was regarded as “the natural habitat of the refined manners and gracious behaviour necessary to civilised men”, Italy was “both Nature’s Darling to the visitor from colder northern lands and the home of classical civilisation, both in its original (ancient Roman) and its recreated (Renaissance) manifestations” (41). Turkey has also attracted many Western travellers for centuries. While some travellers have been fascinated by its unique natural lands involving sublime and picturesque beauties, others have been interested in antiquity, Christianity and the Biblical past in the south eastern part of Turkey, generally referred to as ‘Asia Minor’. Particularly in the eighteenth century, antiquarian travellers and wealthy tourists journeyed to Italy and Greece, some coming as far as Turkey, to start their Classical education by visiting famous places portrayed in literary texts such as Rome, Athens, and Istanbul. Along with the Grand Tour, another significant factor that resulted in a 2 growing interest of the Western Europe in the Turks was the movement of Turquerie, an Orientalist fashion for mimicking Turkish art and culture. In his book Turquerie – An Eighteenth-Century European Fantasy, Haydn Williams defines Turquerie as a means of entertainment and pleasure, which has a figurative role that stresses social status and magnificence in Western Europe (5). Becoming more popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this fashionable phenomenon affected many aspects of the Western culture, including weddings, floor decorations (carpets), gardening (tulips), and drinking (coffee). Therefore, focusing on certain categories such as art, architecture, sculpture and theatre, Turquerie reflects an interesting echo of a weird European phantasm. As a result of this movement, Western intercourses with Turkey, which was initiated as fear and curiosity, was replaced by admire and emulation. However, by the nineteenth century, the dilettante traveller had been largely joined by official parties, sent abroad specifically to study Classical sites and obtain sculptures for their collections. The major aim of these travels was to discover ancient relics and take them back home in order to preserve them for future generations because it was believed that the indifference of the Turks to these ancient sites and their lack of knowledge would result in the decomposition and eventually annihilation of great artefacts which represented antiquity, Christianity and Biblical history (Chandler 219, Fellows 45). Thus, many carved friezes, capitals and statues found their way into European museums during the