The “Terrible Turk”: The Formulation and Perpetuation of a Stereotype in American Foreign Policy
1997; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 17; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0896634600002740
ISSN1305-3299
Autores Tópico(s)Islamic Studies and History
ResumoThe 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).
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