University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/36185 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. WESTERN IMAGES OF TURKEY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Western Images of Turkey in the Twentieth Century by Kamil AYDIN M.A. for The Degree of PILD at The University of Warwick in the Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies December 1994 Table of Contents I- Introduction 1 A: The Role of Chivalry and Manliness in the Formulation of Western Perceptions of- the Orient B: The Origins of the Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction Genre C: The Origins of the Travelogue and Its Role in Establishing the Twentieth Century Picture of Turkey II- Chapter I: An Assortment of Negative Images 44 A: Early Reflections on the Turks 13: Turks on the Early English Stage C: Turks in Travel Writings and Prose Fiction D: The Search for the Exotic: Post Enlightenment Images of Turkey E: Turks in the Philhellenic Works F: The Crimean War: Sonic New Dimensions to the Image of the Turks III- Chapter II: Images of Violence 116 A: Dennis Wheatley: The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935) IV- Chapter III: Images of the Exotic 147 V- Chapter IV: First Impressions of Turkey and the Turks 166 VI- Chapter V: Conclusion: From Verbal to Visual-Representations of Turkey Into the Twenty-First Century 198 Bibliography 218 Acknowledgment I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Susan 13assnett for her consideration, encouragement and invaluable attention to the various drafts this thesis has passed through on its way to completion. I would also like to thank the teaching and secretarial staff of the Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies as well as those at the University of Warwick library, particularly Richard Parker and Helen Ireland. I would like to take the opportunity to thank a great many friends and colleagues in the University for their moral support and encouragement. To some of them my debt is particularly great: Dr. Stanley Ireland for his constructive comments and criticism, Dr. I leloisa Barbosa and her husband, Dr. John Dixon, Christine, Couvanna, MireIla, lIelena, Sabine, Mittu, Mette, Stefania and Recai. The thesis could not have been undertaken without the financial assistance of Ataturk University, and the English Department, especially without the invaluable consideration and back up of Dr. Yildiz Aksoy, the Head of the Department. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, my dear wife, Aynur Ayfer for her endurance and self sacrifice, and above all my three-month old daughter, Bilgenur whose existence contributed much to the completion of the thesis. ABSTRACT While the general idea is to demonstrate how non-Western culture has been represented by a Western one, the particular aim of the thesis is to offer an analysis of twentieth century images of Turkey in the West mainly through the texts of thrillers and travel accounts. Since Turkey has generally been treated as a Middle Eastern country in terms of geography, culture and religion in those texts I have randomly selected, the negative images of Turkey and the Turks have been examined from a non-European point of view taking into account Michel Foucault's analysis interpreted by Edward Said. In order to provide a better understanding of the texts studied in the thesis, there is a brief presentation of the history and development of travel writing and popular fiction as distinct literary genres in the Introduction. Moreover, as the thesis demonstrates that there are a great number of direct or indirect references to historical representations of the Turks identified with the Ottomans, a chronological account of early images is made in the first chapter. These images can be summed up under such general headings as 'Lustful' and 'Terrible' Turks or a combination of both. The analysis of contemporary images of Turkey has been undertaken separately in ensuing chapters. While the images of violence are discussed in the second chapter, the images of the exotic which appear in the third, and the fourth chapter deals with first impressions of Turkey and the Turks. The thesis, which concludes with a discussion of the evolving process of Turkish stereotypes from verbal to visual towards the end of the twentieth century, suggesting that there are also other discourses in the media, particularly in the cinema worth examining as they also construct and perpetuate the negative image discerned in the selection of the texts. INTRODUCTION A great deal of research aimed at examining textual representations of Turks and Turkey has concentrated upon the image of the Turk in centuries prior to the present onel . In the Renaissance, for example, the Turkish lands became a focus of curiosity for Europeans with respect to the inhabitants' exotic costumes, beliefs and manners, and accounts stressed the Turks' wickedness, malice and violence which impressed and appealed to the western public. Playwrights such as Marlowe, Kyd and Shakespeare introduced Turkish figures in their works, using Turkish history as a source of material2. As far as the twentieth century is concerned, a century which may be perceived as a new era in Turkish history and politics following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (1918) and the emergence of modern Turkey as a republic (1923), there is a lack of any critical comment stressing the possible revision of perceptions of the country in the light of such changes. Having looked at a series of texts that appear to represent Turkey in a negative light, from a non-European perspective, and which span several centuries, I have focused in this thesis on twentieth century images of Turkey in the West in popular fiction and travel writing, seeking to explore the continuity of earlier patterns of imagery. With the emergence of a non-European perception expressed by non-European readers, the canon of great European literary masters and discourses has been called into 2 question, just as feminist criticism challenges a male orientation of cultural history, and post-modernist theorists such as Jacques Derrida 3 dispute the role of the reader. This thesis seeks to explore from a non-European perspective how a Western culture represents a non-Western culture in its own writings, since there seems to be a correlation between discourse and politics, more broadly between discourse and culture, which is manifest in any attempt by one culture to talk about another. In discussing the representation of a particular geography, culture or people various discourses appear in association with more familiar concepts such as power and knowledge. In several disciplines, ranging from sociology and anthropology to comparative literature, cultural and translation studies, these concepts have been disputed in various ways. Andre Lefevere and Susan Bassnett in Translation, Culture and History (1990) consider translation as the rewriting4 of an original text. They also point out that rewriting has to do with power and manipulation as it reflects a given ideology and a poetics undergoing a process of transfer. While emphasising practical dimensions of cultural transference such as the introduction of new concepts, genres and devices in the evolution of a literature they also sec rewriting as the shaping power of one culture upon another5. Bassnett takes a similar stance in her argument about translation, power and manipulation within the context of comparative literature, identity, gender and thematics in her Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction 0993)6. In reference to a recent map of Europe' which appears to contradict previous ones by including Turkik or ex- Soviet republics within Europe, she criticises the changes of image-making and of geographies: The map-maker, the translator and the travel writer are not innocent producers of text. The works they create are part of a process of 3 manipulation that shapes and conditions our attitudes to other cultures while purporting to be something else (Comparative Literature, 99). Mahasweta Sengupta treats translation as mimicry of the dominant discourse (or the discourse of the coloniser) in reference to the translations of Rabindranath Tagore whose fame in EurOpe was limited by the way he could be made to function within the structure of imperial power during the colonial period of India. When Sengupta demonstrates that Tagore, translating his poetry from Bengali into English, made some deliberate changes mainly by altering tone, imagery and diction in order to suit the poetics of the target system without carrying the lyrical qualities of the originals into the English translation, she also emphasises that 'his understanding of English language and literature was largely influenced by the aesthetic ideology of the Romantic and Victorian periods, the time when imperialism reached its high-water mark in the expansion of the British Empire' 8. In other words, while he seems to be independent and free of the trappings of an alien culture and vocabulary by writing in the colloquial diction of the actual spoken word of his source language, he enters another context in his translation, a context in which his colonial self finds expression as 'he fits perfectly into the stereotypical role that was familiar to the coloniser, a voice that not only spoke of the peace and tranquillity of a distant world, but also offered an escape from the materialism of the contemporary western world' ('Translation, Colonialism and Poetics As a result, he was praised and awarded the Nobel Prize (1913) and hailed as a great poet until the time when lie began to lecture against nationalism during World War I, and his star began to wane in England and its dominions (Translation, History and Culture, 7).