The Orient and Otherness: Turkish Identity in English Travel Writings (Lady Montagu and Richard Chandler)

In the wake of the Anglo-Turkish political and commercial relations that began to gain much momentum from the 1580s onwards, there was in England a growing interest in Turkey and Turkish society, and various books of travel and history, diplomatic reports, and letters began to be written in this regard. The number of writings as such continued to grow in the following centuries, and the depiction of Turkish identity and the comments made on it showed a great deal of diversity. While on the one hand the Turks, the Turkish society and geography were being othered through a wide range of antagonistic discourses, on the other they were romanticized and described through a discourse that blended fact and fantasy. Among the representatives of these two contrary attitudes, it is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ve Richard Chandler, who visited Turkey on different dates in the eighteenth century, that come to the fore. So, this article is a comparative study and discussion, on the one hand, of Lady Montagu's discourse, embedded with Oriental romanticism and fantasies about Turkish life and society, and, on the other, of Chandler's prejudiced, solipsistic and othering discourse. As a framework of reference and by way of introduction, the changing Western perception of the Orient is dwelt on in a historical context, and also reference is made to the origins of the traditionally antagonistic Western attitude towards Turkish society and people. Adapted from the source document.