Orientalist Representations of Anatolia Imagined by an Appropriative Narrator

Authors : Gökhan Albayrak

Pages : 80-95

Doi:10.35235/uicd.1515097

View : 77 | Download : 120

Publication Date : 2025-12-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This paper aims to explore how Anatolia was represented by the orientalist perspective of the British intelligence officer William John Childs, who traversed across Asia Minor on foot in 1911 in the last decade of the Ottoman Empire during the turmoil that preceded the First World War, prior to the impending collapse of the empire in 1918 and the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. It also attempts to investigate how Asia Minor not only repelled, but also enchanted the Western traveller. Furthermore, this study intends to shed light on how the British colonialist traveller portrayed the peoples of Asia Minor from an imperialist vantage point. Regarding the British as the genuine inheritors of the ancient Greek spirit that he believed he had come across in Anatolia, Childs appropriated the legacy of the ancient Hellenic civilisation in the name of Britain, considering that the peoples of Asia Minor could not live up to its fame. Disregarding the fact that the peoples of Asia Minor had a lot in common and shared certain similar characteristics as the subjects of the Ottoman Empire who had been living together for hundreds of years, the imperialist officer sought to underline the differences between the ethnic communities of Anatolia, bent on spoiling a sense of having common destiny and fostering an unfortunate sense of hostility among its peoples. In accordance with the colonialist and imperialist agenda of the British Empire, Childs misrepresented the peoples of Anatolia as savage, primitive, uncivilised and parochial bigots so that it would be just to allow the British Empire, as opposed to the Germans and the Russians, to take over. Childs’s descriptions of the Anatolian landscape demonstrate how he embodies the colonial desire to penetrate the mysteries of the land that he rendered impregnable.
Keywords : Seyahat yazını, Anadolu, Şarkiyatçılık, İngiliz seyyahlar, Şark

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