The "Terrible Turk" Reconsidered: The Transformation of American Views on the "Turk" through Direct Encounters

Year 2025, Issue: 64, 9 - 22, 30.12.2025

Ayşegül Avcı

Abstract

The “Terrible Turk” image originated in Europe and was later transmitted to colonial America through clerical writings and church culture. After independence, Americans adopted this perception and repeated European descriptions of the “Turk” in Barbary captivity narratives following the enslavement of American seamen by the North African states. Since the region was ruled and populated by Muslims, the negative image of the “Turk” continued to serve as a general label for Islam. The Greek War of Independence further reinforced this perception, depicting “Turks” as cruel oppressors and portraying the conflict as a holy struggle of the Cross against the Crescent. American newspapers circulated and amplified Philhellenism through letters, literary texts, and accounts arriving from Europe, many of which emphasized Ottoman atrocities. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of American missionaries, travelers, diplomats, and merchants visited Anatolia and encountered “Turks” in person. Their writings—some published as travel narratives and personal letters, others preserved in archives—show how firsthand experience challenged earlier assumptions. These texts presented a more favorable view of the Turks without European intervention or secondhand mediation, introducing a more balanced representation into American discourse.

Keywords

Image , travel narratives , captivity narratives , Turkish-American relations , Ottoman Empire

Thanks

This article is based on my doctoral thesis, and I would like to thank TÜBİTAK for the research support.

References

• Barrell, George. Letters from Asia, Written by A Gentleman of Boston to His Friend in That Place. A. T. Goodrich & Co., 1819.
• Byron, Lord. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/5131/5131-h/5131-h.htm. ---. Don Juan: In Sixteen Cantos with Notes. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/21700/21700- h/21700-h.htm.
• Cathcart, James Leander. “The Captives, Eleven Years in Algiers.” Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives, edited by Paul Baepler, U of Chicago P, 1999, pp. 103-46.
• Cline, Myrtle. American Attitude toward the Greek War of Independence, 1821–1828. Higgins-McArthur Company, 1930.
• Cole, Wayne S. An Interpretive History of American Foreign Relations. The Dorsey Press, 1974.
• Colton, Walter. Ship and Shore: Or Leaves from the Journal of a Cruise to the Levant. Lord & Co., 1835.
• “Copy of a Letter Written from Leghorn, by a Greek House, to One of His Friends Here.” Daily National Intelligencer, 19 Aug. 1822. Reprinted in Louisville Public Advertiser, 7 Sept. 1822.
• Cowdery, Jonathan. “American Captives in Tripoli; or Dr. Cowdery’s Journal in Miniature, Kept during His Late Captivity in Tripoli.” Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives, edited by Paul Baepler, U of Chicago P, 1999, pp. 159–86.
• Davison, Roderic H. “The Image of Turkey in the West in Historical Perspective.” Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 1, 1981, pp. 1–6.
• DeKay, James E. Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832 by An American. J. & J. Harper, 1833.
• Erhan, Çağrı. “The American Perception of the Turks: An Historical Record.” The Turkish Yearbook of International Relations, vol. 31, 2000, pp. 77–97.
• “Extract of a Letter from an American Officer on Board the Erie, Dated at Napoli di Romania, Sept. 18.” Christian Secretary, 12 Dec. 1825.
• “Extract of a Letter Received at Boston 30 July 1824.” Aurora General Advertiser, 18 Oct. 1824.
• “Extract of a Private Letter from a Young Greek, Smyrna, May 15.” Daily National Intelligencer, 19 Aug. 1822.
• Finnie, David. Pioneers East: The Early American Experience in the Middle East. Harvard UP, 1967.
• Fisk, Pliny. Memoir of the Rev. Pliny Fisk, A.M.: Late Missionary to Palestine. Edited by A. Bond, Crocker and Brewster, 1828.
• Fowler, Randall. “Puritanism, Islam, and Race in Cotton Mather’s ‘The Glory of Goodness’: An Exercise in Exceptionalism.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, vol. 21, no. 4, 2018, pp. 571–606.
• “Glorious News from Greece!” Aurora and Franklin Gazette, 12 June 1826.
• “Greek Skill and Heroism.” Aurora and Franklin Gazette, 29 Nov. 1824.
• Gürsel, Bahar. “‘Marietza’: An Example of Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Depiction of the ‘Other’ in Her Books for Children.” Women’s Writing, vol. 25, no. 1, 2017, pp. 66–79.
• “Horrors of Greece.” Louisville Public Advertiser, 7 Sept. 1822.
• Lambert, Frank. The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World. Hill and Wang, 2005.
• Marr, Timothy. The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism. Cambridge UP, 2006.
• “Massacre of Greeks.” Louisville Public Advertiser, 7 Sept. 1822.
• Mather, Cotton. “The Glory of Goodness.” Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives, edited by Paul Baepler, U of Chicago P, 1999, pp. 59–70.
• McCarthy, Justin. The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice. U of Utah P, 2010.
• Offley, David. “Letter to Mary Offley.” 10 July 1818, Levantine Heritage, www.levantineheritage.com/offley-letters.html.
• ---. “Letter Written to Mary Offley Sharpless.” 14 Oct. 1824, Levantine Heritage, www.levantineheritage.com/offley-letters.html.
• Offley, John Holmes. Diary of John Holmes Offley. Edited by J. B. Offley, privately printed, 1993.
• Paullin, Charles Oscar. Diplomatic Negotiations of American Naval Officers, 1778–1883. Johns Hopkins Press, 1912.
• Perkins, Justin. A Residence of Eight Years in Persia, Among the Nestorian Christians; with Notices of the Muhammedans. Allen, Morrill & Wardwell, 1843.
• Raizis, Marios Byron, and A. Alexandre Papas. American Poets & the Greek Revolution, 1821–1828. Institute of Balkan Studies, 1972.
• Rapalje, George. A Narrative of Excursions, Voyages, and Travels. West & Trow, 1834.
• Ricketts, Clemuel Green. Notes of Travel, in Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land, Including a Visit to the City of Constantinople in 1841 and 1842. C. Sherman, 1844.
• Sayre, Gordon M. “Renegades from Barbary: The Transnational Turn in Captivity Studies.” American Literary History, vol. 22, no. 2, 2010, pp. 347–59.
• Schonia, Maria. “Byron and Nineteenth-Century Literary Philhellenism in America.” European Journal of American Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1–10.
• Servante, Alain. “Batılıların Gözünde Türk İmajının Geçirdiği Değişimler.” Dünyada Türk İmgesi, edited by Özlem Kumrular, Kitap Yayınevi, 2005, pp. 27–85.
• Snader, Joe. Caught Between Worlds: British Captivity Narratives in Fact and Fiction. UP of Kentucky, 2000.
• St. Clair, William. That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence. OpenBook Publishers, 2008.
• Stephens, John Lloyd. Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia and Poland. William and Robert Chambers, 1839.
• Şişman, Özlem M., and Cengiz Şişman. “From ‘Heathen Turks’ to ‘Cruel Turks’: Religious and Political Roots of the Changing American Perception towards the Middle East.” US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: From American Missionaries to the Islamic State, edited by Tuğrul Keskin and Geoffrey F. Gresh, Routledge, 2018, pp. 13–27.
• Temple, Daniel. Life and Letters of Reverend Daniel Temple, for Twenty-Three Years A Missionary of the A.B.C.F.M. in Western Asia. Edited by Daniel H. Temple, Congregational Board of Publication, 1855.
• “The Following Extracts are from a Letter Addressed to the Editor of the National Gazette, by An Intelligent American Gentleman, Who Visited Smyrna in April Last.” Daily National Intelligencer, 13 July 1830. Reprinted in Indiana Journal, 28 July 1830.
• Tiryakioğlu, Nevsal O. The Western Image of Turks from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century: The Myth of ‘Terrible Turk’ and ‘Lustful Turk.’ 2015. Nottingham Trent U, PhD dissertation.
• Turhan, Filiz. The Other Empire: British Romantic Writings about the Ottoman Empire. Routledge, 2003.
• “Turkish Barbarities.” Daily National Intelligencer, 19 Aug. 1822.