A Critical Look At Jale Parla’s Book “Efendilik, Şarkiyatçılık, Kölelik”

Abstract

This study evaluates Jale Parla's Efendilik, Şarkiyatçılık, Kölelik which is the book version of her doctoral thesis. Edward Said's work Orientalism, which has made a tremendous impact all over the world, has paved the way for a revolutionary awareness in terms of revealing how colonialism manifests itself discursively. This book, written by Jale Parla almost at the same time as Said's Orientalism, also reveals what kind of discourse orientalism produces on Turkishness and how this discourse transforms with the political fractures experienced by the Ottoman Empire; therefore, it is a study that has contributed to the literature of orientalism studies in the early period on the path opened by Said. It differs from similar studies in that it examines the concepts of Turk and Turkishness in literary works produced in different periods in the context of Orientalist discourse. The fact that the works analyzed by the author in the context of orientalist discourse were written in different periods reveals how the myth of the Turk and the perception of Turk and Turkishness in Europe transformed with the change in the political position of the Ottoman Empire. This places the book in a different place from other studies on orientalism. While revealing the change in the discourse produced on Turks and Turkishness, the book aims to emphasize the relationship between power and discourse.

Keywords: Orientalism, Turk, Turkishness, discourse, power.