NOTE: Ozlem Berk will be unable to attend the conference.
Nineteenth century travel writings set definite beliefs and produced a communal image of the East as the "Other." This view made its way to our day, and the division of the world into two parts creating a feeling of hatred did not totally disappear. Today, despite the disappearance of colonial relationships of the nineteenth century, writing a literature of travel still involves power relations.
Turkey's position in this division has been a problematic one. In the last century Turkey--then the Ottoman Empire--was labelled as a country in the Near and the Middle East, in the Balkans, in the Levant, in Asia Minor, and in the Mediterranean. Travellers visited Turkey sometimes together with Greece and Albania or with Russia and Poland or sometimes with Syria and Persia. Being at the crossing point of the Western and Islamic worlds, Turkey has often been analyzed within the terms of different oppositions, such as East and West, traditional and modern, progressive and reactionary, civilized and uncivilized. The geographical as well as cultural "in-between position" of Turkey has not allowed the travellers to construct an established image of the country and its people.
The aim of this paper will be to analyze the ways that modern travellers create and present the image of Turkey. I will look at British travel books written during the 1990s on Turkey, in particular at three books: Looking for Osman: One Man's Travels Through the Paradox of Modern Turkey (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) by Eric Lawlor, A Fez of the Heart: Travels around Turkey in Search of a Hat (London: Picador, 1995) by Jeremy Seal, and Dervish: Travels in Modern Turkey (London: Penguin Books, 1997 [1996]) by Tim Kelsey.
Inspired by the romantic Orientalists of the nineteenth century, modern travellers come to Turkey in search of exotic splendor. What they find is a different country which gives them a certain annoyance because of the loss of the "exotic" and "romantic." On the other hand, there is a continuous criticism for the still "exotic," thus, "different" characteristics of the country. My focus will be, especially, on binary oppositions--as is witnessed already in the titles of their books--that these travellers create trying to define the country and the qualities associated with both sides. One falls into such contradictions especially when trying to compare issues related to modernity/tradition, Europe/Islam, civilization/backwardness, Islamic/secular. Other comparisons have been made especially positioning the narrator--as traveller--and the Turks, the British traveller and other travellers, "modern" and "traditional" Turks, past and present. Representations of women, the image and role of the traveller often as consoler, mistranslations will be other issues that will be examined.
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and
employer.
© Regents of the University of Minnesota, 1997.