Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Korkut Ata Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi (Online), sa.23, ss.162-172, 2025 (Hakemli Dergi)
From the mid-19th century onwards, migration from Ottoman territories to Latin America led to the emergence of new identities that conflicted with the expectations of societies in the region. These immigrants were socially excluded because they did not fit the “ideal European immigrant” typology, and were sometimes represented with negative stereotypes under the name “turcos.” Nevertheless, positive images also emerged through commercial networks, social mobility, and cultural interaction. Consequently, these conflicting perceptions of Ottoman immigrants have also been echoed in Latin American literature, where traces of both othering and acceptance processes can be observed in the narratives. In this context, the literature on Ottoman immigrants, especially in Turkish academic writing, is minimal. While studies of immigrant experiences in Latin America mostly focus on representations originating in Europe, there are very few on the literary and cultural traces of waves of immigration from the Ottoman Empire to the region. For this purpose, the study adopts a qualitative research approach and is based on an image-centered analysis of Jorge Luis Oviedo’s novel “La Turca”, focusing on the unnamed migrant woman character referred to only as “La Turca.” The analysis is carried out within the framework of Daniel-Henri Pageaux’s imagology approach, which emphasizes the historical origins of Ottoman/Turkish images transferred from Europe to Latin America and their reconfiguration in new contexts. Within this theoretical framework, Oviedo examines the place of Turks who migrated to Latin America and the Central American regional population in the collective memory. The findings reveal that the novel reproduces the image of the “turco comerciante” (Turkish merchant), identified with Ottoman immigrants, and transforms this cliché into a lasting perception in the collective memory of Latin American society.