In Many Turks' Eyes, U.S. Remains the Enemy
Hostility Bodes Ill For Efforts to Boost Americans' Image
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 10, 2005
ISTANBUL, April 9 -- In Turkey, heralded as the model of a Westward-looking Muslim democracy, sales records were shattered this spring by a book that imagines a U.S. invasion of this nation, a longtime U.S. ally. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Turks regard that scenario as a real possibility.
Mainstream newspapers here routinely mock U.S. troops in Iraq, and many feature breathless but unsubstantiated reports of American atrocities there, including mythical accounts of troops harvesting organs from dead civilians. One paper announced the U.S. offensive against Fallujah in November with a photo illustration of President Bush wearing a swastika.
Conspiracy theories, a staple topic at teahouses and water coolers, are now taken so seriously that in December the U.S. Embassy felt compelled to issue a statement denying that the United States had caused the tsunami in South Asia and, with it, the deaths of more than 200,000 people.
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