Western images of Turkey in the twentieth century

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