Book Review | Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison: America’s Wife, America’s Concubine

Few scholarly works manage to unpack how superpowers script the rivalries of smaller nations, yet Perin Gürel’s latest book, Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison: America’s Wife, America’s Concubine does precisely that with remarkable clarity. Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Gürel examines how the United States has historically imagined, compared and positioned Türkiye and Iran within a broader geopolitical hierarchy.

Türkiye and Iran are the two most influential, most populated and the most connected countries in volatile region of Middle East. The process of understanding how these two countries have been imagined and pitted against each other is no mere academic endeavour, but rather a process of understanding how power operates in the Middle Eastern region. Gürel’s book is part of the growing body of scholarship where comparison is viewed as a political practice through which hierarchies are established and hegemony is perpetuated. This is explained in “The order of things” by Michael Foucault as to how comparison became central epistemological tool for euro-modernity. Based on this approach, scholars projected western measurement based on hierarchy or rank onto different world. They used comparison as a tool of knowledge production, placing both Iran and Türkiye along the axes of difference and similitude.

The book begins with a complaint. The Shah of Iran was having dinner at the White House with President Kennedy back in 1962 and complained that America treats Türkiye like its wife and Iran like its mistress. This awkward picture becomes the conceptual point of departure for the study. The Shah overtly asserted its political relations in the gendered analogy as stereotypical husband-wife relations to explain uneven power relations between both countries. Such casual remarks encode deeper structures of imperial favouritism and control. The apparently harmless practice of juxtaposing two countries against each other is anything but harmless. It is a love triangle. It necessarily includes a third party, who acts as a judge with a measuring stick. This book traces how policymakers have compared countries using external rubrics. The rubrics categorizes “standard of civilization” based on gender, race and class in western terminology such as modernization, fundamentalism and Third Worldism. The dichotomy between Iran and Türkiye is presented through copy figures and foil figures associated with political leadership – a theme developed throughout the book.

The book traces the story that has been told by the United States for nearly a century regarding the rivalry between Türkiye and Iran by Turks and Iranians themselves, whether as a reaffirmation or a rejection. Gürel introduces “comparativism” as the systematization and institutionalization of the practice of ranking and dividing. This logic persists well beyond its colonial origins into contemporary diplomatic discourse. The genealogy of the idea begins in the period of European colonial practice, where exploration required novel ways to divide the subjugated peoples and territories into categories of superiority and inferiority. The European scholars used comparative measurement of skull size and Aryan myth along with philology, thus resulting in justification of racial classification. The academia in capitalist countries continues to valorize Bloom’s taxonomy which defines orientalism and occidentalism. Consequently, Türkiye and Iran became subjects of comparison to “the West” regardless of their desire. The Cold War security apparatus created by the US labelled these countries with nation-states, secularism and Islamism. Throughout the post-Cold War period, objects of comparisons were used to explain why some nation-states declined or failed, while others came to be labelled as rogue states.

The book uses a number of case studies, and each approaches the same problem from a different angle. The English scholarship, which developed in the context of Cold War area studies, is always very flattering about Atatürk in terms of establishing a new republic, whereas Reza Shah is always considered as failed in the West Asian history due to his monarchical rule and imposition of burqah on women. Turkish scholarship idolizes Atatürk as inviolable. Iranian scholarship, particularly revolutionary, refuses to make the comparison at all, arguing that both were agents of the same imperialism, occasionally indulging in a romantic notion of fraternity between the two men. None of these approaches is an unbiased reading. The author has deconstructed binary view of Türkiye and Iran by rejecting the reductionist West-versus-East model.

Gürel also turns to Empress Farah Pahlavi, arguing that comparativism does not occur just through statecraft and treaties but through politics of beauty aesthetics. In this way, Farah was almost an incarnation of Iranian modernity, always being compared to Jackie Kennedy, Soraya and even the European royalty. This visual diplomacy quietly reinforced civilizational hierarchies between East and West. Gürel takes into consideration the concept of “soft power” put forth by feminists without losing sight of the harsh realities that lurked behind the beautiful, photogenic face of the monarchy. The concept of beauty personified as a model for good governance. This denotes gendered discourse of gharbzadegi (westoxication) for modernization, while discussing the topic of race, which is the least examined strand of the entire Iran-Türkiye dynamic.

The book also ventures into an unlikely area of African American Islam, in which Black Muslim intellectuals, ranging from the Nation of Islam to Malcolm X, envisaged the Turks and the Iranians as potential allies, “honorary Blacks” united by their common antipathy toward the white Christian empire. This unity existed but it was fragile as well. The author examines how this unity deteriorated when Türkiye and Iran adopted completely different foreign policies, with Türkiye making advances towards Muhammad Ali during the Cyprus crisis and Iran’s revolutionary leaders making contact with their black hostages at the embassy takeover. Moving forward, the author addresses issues regarding the practice of veiling and the way an American memoir – “Not Without My Daughter” – shaped not only the understanding of a nation in America but in Türkiye as well. Because the Türkiye came to embrace Hollywood personification of Iran in the figures of oppressed veiled women so this memoir came to caution Turkish people of becoming “another Iran.”

Further discussion on “mysticism” used for nation-branding, in particular the longstanding fascination of Americans with what has been termed “moderate Islam” – Sufism presented as proof that there is a softer version of the religion, Rumi being one cultural heritage that both countries can claim and use in diplomacy during the Cold War and War on Terror. The US promoted Turkish model for greater Middle East project and projected Iran as part of an axis of evil.

The book concludes with the question of whether any of this triangulation could be avoided. This is in reference to the tremendous success of Turkish TV soap operas in Iran, the dubious financial dealings between the elites of both countries, and the gestures of friendship from both countries’ governments following Türkiye failed coup in 2016. Gürel argues that similarity does not necessarily mean solidarity, and common hostility to American power does not necessarily make for justice, reminding readers – though authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism continue to exist in both states, there is a limit to their friendship.

This book represents a remarkable contribution to the existing body of literature on Middle Eastern politics, comparative politics and US foreign policy, offering great insights into the cultural, historical, and ideological processes behind the construction of geopolitical hierarchies. Gürel’s contribution offers valuable insights for International Relations, postcolonial theory and area studies.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.