Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T09:24:06.932Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The “Terrible Turk”: The Formulation and Perpetuation of a Stereotype in American Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

John M. Vander Lippe
John M. Vander Lippe*
Affiliation:
Department of History, State University of New York - New Paltz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The first line of the United States Marine Corps anthem, “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli,” refers to one of the earliest encounters between the United States and the Ottoman Empire, when the American navy attempted to suppress “pirating” along the northern coast of Africa at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Field 1969, pp. 27-67). This ritualization of animosity, framing the American image of the Ottoman Empire, has elements carried over from Europe, in which Muslims in general, and the Turks in particular, are drawn as “cruel, fanatical, lustful and dirty” (Wheatcroft 1993, p. 231). According to the European vision, “[the Turks] were, from the first black day they entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity” (Gladstone 1876). American images mirrored this European perception. For example, as the United States entered World War I in 1917, Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presented the war effort not just as aimed at the defeat of Germany, but as a crusade for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire:

[The Ottoman Turks] have been the pest and the curse of Europe, the source of innumerable wars, the executioners in countless massacres… Such a… government as this is a curse to modern civilization. Like a pestilence it breathes forth contagion upon the innocent air (USC 1917, vol. LVI, p. 64).

Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 17 , fall 1997 , pp. 39 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Al-Azmeh, Aziz. 1993. Islams and Modernities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 1918. The One Hundred and Eighth Annual Report. Boston.Google Scholar
American Committee for the Independence of Armenia. 1920. The Joint Mandate Scheme: A Turkish Empire Under American Protection. New York.Google Scholar
American Committee for the Independence of Armenia. 1922. Untitled Pamphlet, in USDF 711.672/382 1/2. Washington: National Archives, unpublished.Google Scholar
Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal. 1981. A Speech. Ankara: Başbakanlık Yayınevi.Google Scholar
Borah, William. William Borah Papers. Washington: Library of Congress, unpublished.Google Scholar
Bristol, Mark. Mark Lambert Bristol Papers. Washington: Library of Congress, unpublished.Google Scholar
Committee Opposed to the Lausanne Treaty. 1924. “Kemal's Slave Market and the Lausanne Treaty,” in the Henry Morgenthau Papers, Reel 33. Washington: Library of Congress.Google Scholar
Cox, Samuel. 1887. Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey. New York: C. L. Webster and Co.Google Scholar
Daniel, Robert. 1959. “The Armenian Question and American-Turkish Relations, 1914–1927,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLVI, pp. 252–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniel, Robert. 1970. American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820–1960. Athens, Ohio.Google Scholar
Danışman, Basri. 1973. Situation Negative. The Hague.Google Scholar
Davison, Roderic. 1953. “Turkish Diplomacy from Mudros to Lausanne,” in Craig, G. and Gilbert, F. (eds.). The Diplomats, 1919–1939. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 172–209.Google Scholar
DeNovo, John. 1963. American Interests and Policies in the Middle East, 1900–1939. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Earle, Edward. 1924. “Our Holier-Than-Thou-Policy,” The Forum, LXXII.Google Scholar
Evans, Lawrence. 1965. United States Policy and the Partition of Turkey. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.Google Scholar
Feagin, Joe and Feagin, Clairece. 1993. Racial and Ethnic Relations. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Field, James. 1969. America and the Mediterranean World, 1776–1882. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gladstone, William. 1876. The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. London.Google Scholar
Gönlübol, Mehmet and Sar, Cem. 1969. “1919–1938 Yılları Arasında Türk Dış Politikası,” in Bilge, A. Suat, et al., Olaylarla Türk Dış Politikası, 1919–1965 [Turkish Foreign Policy with Events], 2nd ed, Ankara: AUSBF, pp. 3–200.Google Scholar
Gordon, Leleand. 1932. American Relations with Turkey, 1830–1930: An Economic Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grew, Joseph. 1952. Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904–1945. vol. I. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Grew, Joseph. 1954. “The Peace Conference of Lausanne, 1922–1923,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 98, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
Harbord, James. 1920. “Investigating Turkey and Trans-Caucasia,” The World's Work XL, pp. 35–47.Google Scholar
Hart, Albert. 1924. “Making Friends with Unrighteousness,” The Forum, LXXII.Google Scholar
Holt, Thomas. 1995. “Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing of History,” American Historical Review 100 (1995). pp. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
İnönü, İsmet. 1991. Hatıralar [Memoirs], vol. II. Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space, trans, by Nicholson-Smith, Donald, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lenczowski, George. 1990. American Presidents and the Middle East. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lybyer, Albert. 1924. “America's Missionary Record in Turkey,” Current History, XIX.Google Scholar
Melson, Robert. 1992. Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Henry. 1918. Ambassador Morgenthau's Story. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Co. Henry Morgenthau Papers. Washington: Library of Congress, unpublished.Google Scholar
Pamuk, Şevket. 1984. Osmanlı Ekonomisi ve Dünya Kapitalizmi, 1820–1913 [The Ottoman Economy and World Capitalism, 1820–1913]. Ankara: Yurt Yayınları.Google Scholar
“Peace Terms with Turkey.” 1923. Current History, XIX, pp. 89–99.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Trask, Roger. 1970. “The ‘Terrible Turk’ and Turkish-American Relations in the Interwar Period,” The Historian, XXXIII, pp. 40–53.Google Scholar
“The Turco-American Treaty.” 1923. Current History, XIX pp. 100–101.Google Scholar
Turlington, Edgar. 1924. The American Treaty of Lausanne. Boston: World Peace Foundation.Google Scholar
United States Congress (USC). 1917. Congressional Record. 65th Congress, 2nd Session. Washington: U.S.G.P.O.Google Scholar
United States Congress (USC). 1919. Congressional Record. 66th Congress, 1st Session. Washington: U.S.G.P.O.Google Scholar
United States Congress (USC). 1920. House Documents. 66th Congress, 2nd Session. Washington: U.S.G.P.O.Google Scholar
United States Congress (USC). 1996. Congressional Record. 104th Congress, 2nd Session. Washington: U.S.G.P.O.Google Scholar
United States. State Department (USSD). Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. Washington: U.S.G.P.O.Google Scholar
United States. State Department. Decimal File (USDF), Series 711. Washington: National Archives, unpublished.Google Scholar
Wheatcroft, Andrew. 1993. The Ottomans. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Williams, Sam. Sam Williams Papers. Stanford: Hoover Institution Archives, unpublished.Google Scholar
Yergin, Daniel. 1991. The Prize. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar