In a 2001 ballot, Turks ranked the U.S. optimum while requested: “Which nation is Turkey’s ally in overseas relations?” whilst the pollsters reversed the question—“Which kingdom is Turkey’s #1 enemy in overseas relations?”—the usa got here in moment. How did Turkey’s electorate come to carry such opposing perspectives at the same time? In The Limits of Westernization, Perin E. Gürel explains this exact break up and its echoes in modern U.S.-Turkey relatives.

Using Turkish and English resources, Gürel maps the response of Turks to the increase of the us as a world-ordering energy within the 20th century. As Turkey transitioned from an empire to a countryside, the country’s ruling elite projected “westernization” as an important and fascinating strength but in addition feared its cultural harm. Turkish inventory figures and figures of speech represented the United States either as an outstanding version for selective westernization and as a perilous resource of degeneration. whilst, U.S. coverage makers imagined Turkey from inside their very own civilization templates, first because the major determine of Oriental barbarism (i.e., “the poor Turk”), then, in the course of the chilly warfare, pretty much as good students of modernization concept. because the chilly conflict transitioned to the struggle on Terror, Turks rebelled opposed to the hot U.S.-made trope of the “moderate Muslim.” neighborhood artifacts of westernization—folk tradition crossed with American cultural exports—and exchange projections of modernity turned tinder for either Turkish anti-Americanism and resistance to state-led modernization tasks.

The Limits of Westernization analyzes the advanced neighborhood makes use of of “the West” to give an explanation for how the U.S. may perhaps turn into either the simplest and the worst within the Turkish political mind's eye. Gürel lines how principles approximately westernization and the USA have motivated nationwide historical past writing and coverage making, in addition to daily impacts and identities. Foregrounding moving tropes approximately and from Turkey—a nearby strength that maintains to dominate American visions for the “modernization” of the center East—Gürel additionally illuminates the transnational improvement of strong political tropes, from “the bad Turk” to “the Islamic Terrorist.”