America and the Making of Modern Turkey

Science, Culture and Political Alliances

Ali Erken (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

240 Seiten

2019
I.B. Tauris (Verlag)
978-1-83860-468-4 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's government encouraged substantial American investment in education and aid. It was argued that Turkey needed the technical skills and wealth offered by American education, and so a series of American schools was set up across the country to educate the Turkish youth. Here, Ali Erken, in the first study of its kind, argues that these organizations had a huge impact on political and economic thought in Turkey - acting as a form of `soft power' for US national interests throughout the 20th Century. Robert College, originally a missionary school founded by US benefactors, has been responsible for educating two Turkish Prime Ministers, writers such as Orhan Pamuk and a huge number of influential economists, politicians and journalists. The end result of these American philanthropic efforts, Erken argues, was a consensus in the 1970s that the country must `westernize'. This mindset, and the opposition viewpoint it engendered, has come to define political struggle in modern Turkey - torn between a capitalist `modern' West and an Islamic `Ottoman' East. The book also reveals how and why the Rockefeller and Ford foundations funneled large amounts of money into Turkey post-1945, and undertook activities in support of `Western' candidates in Turkey as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. This is an essential contribution to the history of US-Turkish relations, and the influence of the West in Turkish political thought.

Ali Erken is Lecturer in Middle East Studies at the University of Marmara in Turkey. He completed his DPhil at Oxford University

Erscheinungsdatum	20.09.2019
Sprache	englisch
Maße	138 x 216 mm
Gewicht	281 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
ISBN-10	1-83860-468-5 / 1838604685
ISBN-13	978-1-83860-468-4 / 9781838604684
Zustand	Neuware