The Korean War in Turkish Culture and Society by Nadav Solomonovich

Author:Nadav Solomonovich
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030840365
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Depicting the “Other”

The image of “the other” as opposed to the in-group is an essential mechanism for the construction (and even the maintenance) of national cohesion.69 In the wake of the Korean War, Turkey attempted to adopt a new, more Western image and identity. In that respect, the fear of the Communist Soviet Union, due to its territorial demands, led—even prior to the Korean War—to an extremely negative view of Communism in Turkey. This view was manifested in its most vehement form in Osman İ. Bilger’s “Kore’deki Sevgili,” where he depicted Communism as “malaria” and described Communism’s goal as “to steal money from the rich and respect from the respectable, to disfigure the beautiful … to kill the geniuses and destroy their masterpieces.”70

According to Üngör, in the Korean War narratives, the image of the Chinese country and people was never separated from their ideological background and beliefs. As Turks mainly fought against Communist Chinese troops throughout the war, the perception of the Chinese as the evil enemy was to be expected.71 And, indeed, many authors used animal metaphors to describe the Chinese soldiers in order to dehumanize them. The most popular metaphor was that of dogs. Bilger, for example, equated the Chinese to animals, stating that they are vicious, dirty, ugly, and resemble one another.72 Similar metaphors were also used by Güventürk and Bilgisel, who also depicted the Chinese as moles and rats to disparage their guerrilla tactics.73 While Üngör mentions that Turkish memoir writers were in a dilemma whether to depict the Chinese military as weak or strong,74 such a dilemma did not exist for the pro-war authors, who usually described the Chinese as much weaker than the Turks. In order to do so, they created scenes in which unarmed Turks manage to overpower armed Chinese soldiers, or when a single Turkish soldier captures several Chinese.75 Another point worth mentioning is that the Chinese were referred to in several works as infidels (gavur), or atheists (dinsiz), thus strengthening the religious importance of the war while also sharpening the image of the Chinese as the significant other. It is worth noting that while the Chinese were regarded as an example of decline and submission to European interests during the early twentieth century, no such accusation or depiction appears in the pro-war literature.76 This may indicate that for some authors, the older Ottoman and early Republican paradigm of “decline versus progress” was replaced by a new version of the old “believers versus infidels” dichotomy, the infidels being the Communists in this equation and the believers being members of the Abrahamic religions, which also coincided with member states belonging to the Western camp. Whether we choose to accept Üngör’s view that “the Korean War was critical in shaping the long-term relations of China and Turkey”77 or not, it is safe to say that it at least shaped a negative image of the Chinese during the war and in its subsequent years.

But what about Turkey’s Western allies? How were they depicted in the

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