Translation of difference into otherness: Jeremy Seal’s "A Fez of the Heart" (1995)
Translation of difference into otherness: Jeremy Seal’s "A Fez of the Heart" (1995)

Summary/Abstract: Turkish identity is questioned in very different platforms. Whenever an issue is raised about Turkey, it is most likely to be related to whether Turkey can be considered as a part of Europe, thus the West or not. The killing of the dogs leads to a questioning of Turkey’s identity. Chancellor tries to establish a link between being Muslim and the perverted. He attempts to generalize the marginal acts of killing and then abusing dogs as an indication of non-Europeanness of Turkey. Thus these queer acts function as dissociating Turkey from Europe or the West. When we read Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and Seal’s A Fez of the Heart together, as far as the depiction of Turkish modernization is concerned, there is an amazing similarity between these two texts. To begin with, they both assume that Turkish reforms are merely the impositions of the Turkish rulers who do not regard how their people think and feel about them. Secondly, highlighting the “resurgence of Islam” in Turkey, both writers emphasize Turkey’s Islamic identity as a sign of non-belonging to the West or Europe. Finally, they claim that Turkish westernization has been an indisputable failure as these reforms have neither made Turkish society European nor have they convinced Europeans to consider Turks as such. On the other hand, neither Seal nor Huntington refers to what Turkish society has gained from the reforms.

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