Turks through the Lens of Hemingway: A Critical Discourse Analysis of War Dispatches

This paper investigates the journalistic writings of Ernest Hemingway, specifically twenty articles written for The Toronto Daily Star between 1922 and 1923, focusing on the aftermath of the Turkish War of Independence and the geopolitical climate preceding the Treaty of Lausanne. Utilising Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework, the study examines how Hemingway linguistically and discursively constructed the image of Turks, the Turkish National Movement, and Mustapha Kemal Pasha within the context of the era’s pervasive anti-Turkish propaganda. The analysis reveals that while Hemingway employed a realist style, his dispatches often reproduced Orientalist stereotypes, framing the conflict through a binary of “Christian victimhood” versus “Eastern fanaticism.” Quantitative findings indicate a significant discursive strategy of delegitimisation, evidenced by the frequent use of the bare secondary “Kemal” (n=76) instead of his official title and name “Mustapha Kemal Pasha,” and the association of Turkish forces with terms like “bandit” and “holy war.” The study concludes that Hemingway’s journalism served to reinforce Western hegemonic narratives, positioning the Turkish struggle not as a war for sovereignty but as a threat to Western order.