Does Turkey Hate the USA? Unpacking the Complexities of Turkish-American Relations

In recent years, going overseas has come to represent a particular type of middle-class, college-educated American. As a result, travel narratives abound. However, renowned journalist Suzy Hansen’s Notes on a Foreign Country is not a sentimental tale of self-discovery in the vein of Eat Pray Love. Rather, she presents the depressing yet hopeful tale of a young American learning to accept the influence her nation has had on the world in the last century.

“For all their patriotism, Americans rarely think about how their national identities relate to their personal ones. In the introduction, Hansen states that this apathy is exclusive to the history of the United States and specific to the psychology of white Americans, who are unaware of who they are.

Hansen shares her increasing loss of naïveté after moving to Istanbul in 2007 as part of a Charles Crane writing fellowship and staying there ever since. She discovers that, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey was transformed into a secular state under Atatürk, a process that was similar to the founding of the United States. She learns about the systematic U. S. endeavor to establish a new global order following World War II: “The Americans assumed that the rest of the world, including Asians and Arabs emerging from their own colonial nightmares, would tolerate a new bunch of white foreigners dropping their bombs and telling them what to do because of the helpless pliancy of the Europeans and Japanese.” ”.

Suzy Hansen’s Notes on a Foreign Country is not a romantic Eat Pray Love style tale of self-discovery.

The journey that begins in Turkey continues elsewhere. When she travels to Greece during the height of the global financial crisis, she finds out that it was the first nation where the US staged one of its numerous Cold War-era interventions, secretly planning the assassination of American journalist George Polk, blaming the communists for it, and using this as a pretext to give cash and military support to an oppressive government—a tactic that the US S. government would employ again and again throughout the Cold War.

She finds out in Egypt that, once more out of concern that nationalism would give way to communist influence, the US suppressed it throughout the Arab world. (What it did instead was to create a power vacuum that would give rise to the Muslim Brotherhood. ) She then learns that U. S. fears of communism likewise paved the way for extremism in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Americans are sometimes surprised by the rest of the world’s dislike of them. As an American who traveled overseas during the first ten years of this century (first to Uruguay on a Fulbright scholarship, then to work at an international school in Nicaragua), I was embarrassed by much of the information I discovered about the lengthy history of my nation in the hemisphere, including the 1973 coup in Chile, the Contra War in Nicaragua, and U.S. S. support of dictatorships throughout the continent, the School of the Americas. In my opinion, Hansen’s book makes all the necessary connections, showing how the United States transitioned from a rebellious nation to an imperial power at the start of the 20th century, particularly after World War II. This transition was widely perceived as a betrayal of the country’s ideals.

Hansen recognizes modernity as one of the most deeply rooted tacit promises of the American mind.

Hansen recognizes signs of U. S. imperialism in elements as disparate as master’s degree programs (like the University of Iowa’s prestigious M. F. A. that advised aspiring novelists to steer clear of politics and history when selecting their subjects) and lodging establishments (such as the ubiquitous Hilton, which offers the world’s upper classes an opulent, American-style space) She also sees a chilling correlation between American N. G. O. s, which frequently bring an idea of what will work best for the host nation before speaking with the locals, and the U S. military.

The topic of modernity, which Hansen acknowledges as one of the most ingrained implicit promises of the American mind, is one theme that permeates the entire book. “It seems like a lot of what I’ve read about Cold War initiatives is true—so-called modernity is presented as the opposite of Islamic societies, and neoliberalism and globalization are acknowledged as normal, inevitable phenomena. deep down I had found Erdoğan’s pro-business, American-sounding rhetoric deeply comforting, the obvious path forward for Turkey. ”.

I see Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s work, which outlines two theories of modernity, as being similar to Hansen’s discussion of modernity. The contemporary Atlantic world is seen as one culture (or a group of closely related cultures) among others, according to his “cultural theory” of modernity, with unique understandings of things like person, nature, and the good that set it apart from all other civilizations, including its own antecedent civilization (with which it obviously also shares a lot in common). ” In contrast, Taylor’s “acultural theory” is one that “describes these transformations in terms of some culture-neutral operation. that is viewed as a type that any traditional culture could go through rather than one that is defined in terms of the particular cultures it brings us from and to. ”.

This “acultural” approach to modernity, in Taylor’s opinion, eventually leads those in positions of authority to ethnocentrically project their norms and values onto the rest of the world, ignoring the possibility of viable alternatives that are still very much “modern,” and persistently asking, “Why can’t they just be like us?” RELATED STORIES

Hansen eventually has to confront her own implicit beliefs about American exceptionalism and superiority as a result of her travels and interactions with people, most of whom she discovers know a great deal more about the US than she does about their nations. Despite a hint of shame in her first reaction, she soon gets over it and expresses gratitude for “the world’s unending generosity,” a humble realization that “the American dream may have come at the expense of a million other destinies,” and curiosity about the people she meets (shown by a genuine desire to listen to them). This book, which is written with compassion and a strong desire for justice, is essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of the quickly shifting times we live in. Although our country’s leaders continue to assert their authority, American hegemony is increasingly being questioned.

This story was published in print as well, with the headline “Why do they hate us? An American in Turkey looks for an explanation.” ,” in the October 16, 2017, issue.

Jeannine M. Pitas is an assistant professor of English and Spanish at the University of Dubuque in Iowa, as well as a writer and literary translator from Spanish to English. She contributes to the Catholic blog Vox Nova.

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What TURKEY Thinks of AMERICA?