Andrew Orr – författare

At the end of World War I, parts of the defeated Ottoman Empire were seized and partitioned by the Allied Powers. In response, the newly formed Turkish National Movement waged a military campaign to win Turkey’s independence, eventually leading to the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.

In Facing the Victorious Turks, Andrew Orr argues that French military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials’ Orientalism and racism led them to misinterpret the Turkish War of Independence by placing Europeans at the center of their analysis of the Middle East. French observers’ flawed understanding of Muslims and Islam fed conspiracy theories that distorted their understanding of Germany, the emerging Soviet Union, Middle Eastern politics, and colonialism. It allowed them to perceive and report the danger of Middle East–wide revolts without questioning whether it was European rule itself that was causing the political turmoil. French military leaders were thus able to escape the sort of self-reflection that might have exposed the exploitative nature of colonialism and pushed them to question the moral and strategic justifications for colonial rule.

Orr’s study draws on French and British military, diplomatic, and intelligence documents, published Turkish sources, journalistic accounts, and combatants’ and aid workers’ journals. It also takes advantage of US intelligence and diplomatic papers that included correspondence with French military and diplomatic officials in Constantinople.

Facing the Victorious Turks is valuable reading for anyone interested in nationalism and imperialism, intelligence studies, French involvement in the Middle East, and modern Turkish history.

The Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax explores the vulnerability of educated and politically engaged Westerners to Progressive Orientalism, a form of Orientalism embedded within otherwise egalitarian and anti-imperialist Western thought. Early in the Arab Spring, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog appeared. Its author claimed to be Amina Arraf, a Syrian American lesbian Muslim woman living in Damascus. After the blog’s went viral in April 2011, Western journalists electronically interviewed Amina, magnifying the blog’s claim that the Syrian uprising was an ethnically and religiously pluralist movement anchored in an expansive sense of social solidarity. However, after a post announced that the secret police had kidnapped Amina, journalists and activists belatedly realized that Amina did not exist and Thomas “Tom” MacMaster, a forty-year-old straight white American man and peace activist living and studying medieval history in Scotland was the blog’s true author. MacMaster’s hoax succeeded by melding his and his audience’s shared political and cultural beliefs into a falsified version of the Syrian Revolution that validated their views of themselves as anti-racist and anti-imperialist progressives by erasing real Syrians.

Watch our book talk with the author Andrew Orr here: https://youtu.be/MnaaxlO6Vuw

The Gay Girl in Damascus Hoax explores the vulnerability of educated and politically engaged Westerners to Progressive Orientalism, a form of Orientalism embedded within otherwise egalitarian and anti-imperialist Western thought. Early in the Arab Spring, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog appeared. Its author claimed to be Amina Arraf, a Syrian American lesbian Muslim woman living in Damascus. After the blog’s went viral in April 2011, Western journalists electronically interviewed Amina, magnifying the blog’s claim that the Syrian uprising was an ethnically and religiously pluralist movement anchored in an expansive sense of social solidarity. However, after a post announced that the secret police had kidnapped Amina, journalists and activists belatedly realized that Amina did not exist and Thomas “Tom” MacMaster, a forty-year-old straight white American man and peace activist living and studying medieval history in Scotland was the blog’s true author. MacMaster’s hoax succeeded by melding his and his audience’s shared political and cultural beliefs into a falsified version of the Syrian Revolution that validated their views of themselves as anti-racist and anti-imperialist progressives by erasing real Syrians.

Watch our book talk with the author Andrew Orr here: https://youtu.be/MnaaxlO6Vuw