Антитюркизм: история и проявления враждебности к туркам и турецкой культуре

Hostility, fear or intolerance against Turkish peoples

Anti Turkish sentiment, also known as Anti Turkism (Türk karşıtlığı), or Turkophobia (Türkofobi) is hostility, intolerance, or xenophobia against Turkish people, Turkish culture and the Turkish language. The term refers to not only against Turks across all regions, but also against the subjects of the Ottoman Empire, as well as descendants of ethnic Turks such as Syrian Turkmen and Iraqi Turkmen. It is also applied to groups who developed in part under the influence of Turkish culture and traditions while converting to Islam, especially during the time of the Ottoman Empire, such as Albanians, Bosniaks and other smaller ethnic groups around Balkans.

In the Early modern period, the fall of Constantinople and the Ottoman wars in Europe—part of European Christians' effort to stem the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor to Turkey—helped fuel the development of anti Turkism. By the middle of the 15th century, special masses called missa contra Turcos (Latin for "mass against Turks") were held in various places in Europe to spread the message that victory over the Ottomans was only possible with the help of God and that a Christian community was therefore necessary to withstand the Turks.

As the Ottomans expanded their empire west, Western Europe came into more frequent contact with the Turks, often militarily. During the Fourth Ottoman–Venetian War, the Ottomans conquered Cyprus. In the 16th century, around 2,500 publications about the Turks—including more than 1,000 in German—were released in Europe, spreading the image of the "bloodthirsty Turk". From 1480 to 1610, twice as many books were published about the Turkish threat to Europe than about the discovery of the New World. Bishop Johann Faber of Vienna claimed, "There are no crueler and more audacious villains under the heavens than the Turks, who spare no age or sex and mercilessly cut down young and old alike and pluck unripe fruit from the wombs of mothers." Martin Luther, the German leader of the Protestant Reformation, took advantage of these fears by asserting that the Turks were "the agents of the Devil who, along with the Antichrist located in the heart of the Catholic Church, Rome, would usher in the Last Days and the Apocalypse". Luther believed that the Ottoman invasion was God's punishment of Christians for allowing corruption in the Holy See and the Catholic Church. In 1518, when he defended his 95 Theses, Luther claimed that God had sent the Turks to punish Christians just as he had sent war, plague, and earthquakes. (In response, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull in which he threatened Luther with excommunication and portrayed him as a troublemaker who advocated capitulation to the Turks.) Spurred by this argument, the Portuguese Empire, seeking to capture more land in East Africa and other parts of the world, used any encounter with the "Terrible Turk" as "a prime opportunity to establish credentials as champions of the faith on par with other Europeans". Stories of the "dog Turk" reinforced the negative image. The dog Turk was claimed to be a man eating being, half animal and half human, with a dog's head and tail. After the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the image of the dog Turk became a figure used to ridicule Turks in carnival processions and masquerades, where "dog Turk" characters began to appear alongside witches and clowns. Voltaire and other European writers described the Turks as tyrants who destroyed Europe's heritage; with Voltaire characterizing Turks as "tyrants of the women and enemies of arts" and "barbarian usurpers who must be chased out of Europe."

Before the 1960s, Turkey had a relatively low rate of emigration. However, after the adoption of a new constitution in 1961, Turkish citizens began to migrate elsewhere. Gradually, Turks became a "prominent ethnic minority group" in some Western countries. But from the beginning, they were subject to discrimination. At times, when host countries adopted more immigrant friendly policies, "only the Turkish workers were excluded" from them. In various European languages, the word "Turk" has acquired a meaning similar to "barbarian" or "heathen", or is used as a slur or curse. As a result, the word also has some negative connotations in the United States.

The Arab World has a long history of mixed relations with the Turks back from the Ottoman Empire. In the past, the Ottoman conquest had absorbed a large number of Arab countries into its map, ultimately opened a chapter of a complicated relationship between Turks and Arabs. While both are Muslim majority, subsequent conflict of interests and the growing Turkification and nationalist movement had led to growing anti Arabism among Turks, especially following the Arab Revolt during the First World War.

The fear of Turkish influence has always dominated Iraq and as such, relationship between Iraq and Turkey has always been tense. The position of the Iraqi Turkmen has changed from being administrative and business classes of the Ottoman Empire to an increasingly discriminated against minority. Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Iraqi Turkmen have been victims of several massacres, such as the Kirkuk Massacre of 1959. Furthermore, under the Ba'ath Party, discrimination against the Iraqi Turkmen increased, with several leaders being executed in 1979 Thus, they have suffered from various degrees of suppression and assimilation that ranged from political persecution and exile to terror and ethnic cleansing. Despite being recognized in the 1925 constitution as a constitutive entity, the Iraqi Turkmen were later denied this status; hence, cultural rights were gradually taken away and activists were sent to exile. The Iraqi Turkmen living in the region of Kirkuk were perceived as posing a threat to the stability of Iraq, particularly as they did not support the ascendancy of King Faisal I to the Iraqi throne. The Kirkuk massacre of 1959 came about due to the Iraqi government allowing the Iraqi Communist Party, which in Kirkuk was largely Kurdish, to target the Iraqi Turkmen. With the appointment of Maarouf Barzinji, a Kurd, as the mayor of Kirkuk in July 1959, tensions rose following the 14 July revolution celebrations, with animosity in the city polarizing rapidly between the Kurds and Iraqi Turkmen. On 14 July 1959, fights broke out between the Iraqi Turkmen and Kurds, leaving some 20 Iraqi Turkmen dead. Furthermore, on 15 July 1959, Kurdish soldiers of the Fourth Brigade of the Iraqi army mortared Iraqi Turkmen residential areas, destroying 120 houses. Order was restored on 17 July by military units from Baghdad. The Iraqi government referred to the incident as a "massacre" and stated that between 31 and 79 Iraqi Turkmen were killed and some 130 injured. Furthermore, Iraqi Turkmen villages and towns were destroyed to make way for Arab migrants, who were promised free land and financial incentives. For example, the Ba'ath regime recognized that the city of Kirkuk was historically an Iraqi Arab city and remained firmly in its cultural orientation. In addition, on 30 October 1981, the Revolution's Command Council issued decree 1391, which authorized the deportation of Iraqi Turkmen from Kirkuk with paragraph 13 noting that "this directive is specially aimed at Turkmen and Kurdish officials and workers who are living in Kirkuk". Thus, ethnic cleansing was an element of the Ba'thist policy aimed at reducing the influence of the Iraqi Turkmen in northern Iraq's Kirkuk. Those Iraqi Turkmen who remained in cities such as Kirkuk were subject to continued assimilation policies;

The Kurds claimed de facto sovereignty over land that Iraqi Turkmen regards as theirs. For the Iraqi Turkmen, their identity is deeply inculcated as the rightful inheritors of the region as a legacy of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, it is claimed that the Kurdistan Region and Iraqi government has constituted a threat to the survival of the Iraqi Turkmen through strategies aimed at eradicating or assimilating them. According to Anderson and Stansfield, in the 1990s, tension between the Kurds and Iraqi Turkmen inflamed as the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) were institutionalized as the political hegemons of the region and, from the perspective of the Iraqi Turkmen, sought to marginalize them from the positions of authority and to subsume their culture with an all pervading Kurdistani identity. With the support of Ankara, a new political front of Turkmen parties, the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), was formed on 24 April 1995. Promoted by the KDP as the "true voice" of the Iraqi Turkmen, the Turkmen National Association has a pro Kurdistani stance and has effectively weakened the ITF as the sole representative voice of the Iraqi Turkmen. According to United Nations reports, the KRG and Peshmerga were "illegally policing Kirkurk, abducting Turkmen and Arabs and subjecting them to torture". Between 2003 and 2006, 1,350 Turkmens in Tal A'far died and thousands of houses were damaged or demolished, resulting in 4,685 displaced families. A recognized genocide in 2014 was done to Iraqi Turkmen by the Islamic State. In 2020, over 15 Turkish nationals have been taken into custody for the same reason. Haftar had also ordered shooting down any Turkish ships and interests, banning flights to Turkey.

Saudi Arabia has a very tense relationship with Turkey, owing it to Ottoman Saudi War when the Saudis were defeated by the Ottomans, which contributed to the Turkish rule for another century before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and its alliance with the Al Rashid family against the Al Saud. The tensions rekindled in the 21st century with Erdoğan's desire to "revive the Ottoman Empire", which draws Saudi Arabia to be more antagonistic to Turkey. Saudi Arabia has since then made numerous policies, such as labeling the Ottoman Empire as the occupants of Arabia, financing movies that are deemed anti Turkish, and recently, banning Turkish websites and leading boycotts against Turkey.

From the French mandate era to the Assad regime, the Turkish culture and language have perished for a section of the Syrian Turkmen community. Many Syrian Turkmen have become Arabized and assimilated in areas where they form a minority. Consequently, Arabization is mainly an exception in areas where the Syrian Turkmen live in areas where they form a significant population, where they have continued to maintain their Turkish identity and language despite discriminative state policies. For the Syrians, the annexation of Alexandretta became a national wound and a symbol of increasing Turkish meddling of Syrian affairs. This had led to the beginning of anti Turkish discrimination, intensified under the government of Hafez al Assad and the Arabization process. Syrian Turkmen, suffered discrimination over employment and education and were forbidden from writing and publishing in their native Turkish dialect. Syrian Turkmen occupied a low rung on the societal ladder, as reported by Al Bawaba, it was stated that Assad always sought to benefit his politically dominant Shiite religious minority. The report quoted Bayırbucak Turkmen as highlighting, "They would take Alawites first no matter what, even if they had degrees, Turkmen couldn't find jobs". With the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, Syrian Turkmen had sided with the Syrian opposition, which fed the growth of anti Turkism in Syria. The Syrian Armed Forces, with Russian support, often bombed Syrian Turkmen positions as well as increased xenophobic attacks against Turkmen, accusing them of being Ankara's stooge.

In December 2017, the UAE's foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, shared a tweet that claimed an Ottoman general had robbed Medina during Ottoman rule. Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash then added, "The sectarian and partisan view is not an acceptable alternative, and the Arab world will not be led by Tehran or Ankara."

A 2013 study showed that 13.2% of the Kurds in Turkey had a negative view of Turks. Other numbers include 22.3% who would not accept a Turkish son/daughter in law and 5% who would not want to live next to a Turk. The study also showed that left oriented Kurds were less likely to show tolerance towards Turks, while religious affiliation did not play any significance.

According to Fatma Müge Göçek the main reasons for anti Turkish sentiment in Western Europe are Armenian genocide denial and the role of Turkish migrant workers in the economy.

In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Islamic culture and life was destroyed through state policies and a group of Albanian historians, often with nationalist perspectives promoted in their literature "the Turkish savagery" and Albanian Christian resistance toward the Ottoman Empire. Scholars who opposed anti Turkish and anti Muslim narratives were subjected to ostracism and penalties. In the 2010s, opposition to Turkey building mosques in Albania or exerting its political influence exists among part of the population. They view Turkey as an interfering or autocratic power and Islam as a negative imposed Ottoman legacy.

The island of Cyprus became an independent state in 1960, with power shared between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots under the London–Zürich Agreements. But in December 1963, in events that became known as Bloody Christmas in which 364 Turks were killed, Turkish Cypriots were ousted from the republic and Greek Cypriots began a military campaign against them, leading to 11 years of ethnic clashes. Turkish Cypriots bore the heavier cost in terms of casualties, and some 25,000—about a fifth of the population of Turkish Cypriots—were internally displaced. Thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses left behind were ransacked or completely destroyed. They lived as refugees for at least ten years, until the 1974 Turkish invasion. This resulted in an exodus of Turkish Cypriots, with the majority migrating to the United Kingdom and others to Turkey, North America, and Australia. On 13 February 1963 Greeks and Greek Cypriots attacked the Turkish Cypriot quarter of Limassol with tanks killing 16 and injuring 35 Turks. Between 11 and 13 May 1964, Cypriot Police executed much as 28 Turkish Cypriot civilians in Famagusta and Akrotiri and Dhekelia. On 14 and 15 November 1967, Greek Cypriots murdered 26 Turkish Cypriots during their retreat from Kofinou. Numerous atrocities against the Turkish Cypriot community were committed in response to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. In the Maratha, Santalaris and Aloda massacre by EOKA B, 126 people were killed on 14 August 1974. The United Nations described the massacre as a crime against humanity, by saying "constituting a further crime against humanity committed by the Greek and Greek Cypriot gunmen." In the Tochni massacre, 85 Turkish Cypriot inhabitants were massacred. The Washington Post covered another atrocity in which it is written that: "In a Greek raid on a small Turkish village near Limassol, 36 people out of a population of 200 were killed. The Greeks said that they had been given orders to kill the inhabitants of the Turkish villages before the Turkish forces arrived." In Limassol, upon the fall of the Turkish Cypriot enclave to the Cypriot National Guard on 20 July 1974, the Turkish Cypriot quarter was burned, women raped and children shot according to Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot eyewitness accounts. 1300 people were then led to a prison camp. On 12 July 2020, The primate of the Church of Cyprus, Archbishop Chrysostomos II has expressed his opinions regarding the reversion of the Hagia Sophia museum to a mosque stating that "The Turks have remained uncivilized, they are rude, and they will remain [this way]." He added that "Turkey has learned to destroy, it has learned to appropriate the cultures of others and sometimes, when it does not benefit it, it destroys them and falsely presents cultures as its own."

Turks are "the most prominent ethnic minority group in contemporary Germany", and discrimination and violence against them are common. In public discourse and popular jokes, they are often portrayed as "ludicrously different in their food tastes, dress, names, and even in their ability to develop survival techniques". The number of violent acts by right wing extremists in Germany increased dramatically between 1990 and 1992. On November 25, 1992, three Turkish residents were killed in a firebombing in Mölln, a town in northern Germany. And on May 29, 1993, in an arson attack in Solingen, five members of a Turkish family that had resided in Germany for 23 years were burnt to death. Several neighbors heard someone shout "Heil Hitler!" before dousing the front porch and door with gasoline and setting fire to the home. Most Germans condemned these attacks, and many marched in candlelight processions. According to Greg Nees, "because Turks are both darker skinned and Muslim, conservative Germans are largely against granting them citizenship".

A member of the European parliament from the Greek far right Golden Dawn party, former army lieutenant general Eleftherios Synadinos has been expelled from a European Parliament plenary session after a racist remark, stating that "As it has been expressed in scientific literature, the Turks are dirty and polluted. Turks are like wild dogs when they play but when they have to fight against their enemies they run away. The only effective way to deal with the Turks is with decisive and resolute attitudes." Ioannis Lagos, who has been a Greek lawmaker serving as a Member of the European Parliament, has tore a Turkish flag made of paper into pieces in January 2020 during a session of debate for the humanitarian situation on the Greek islands due to illegal immigrations. The former Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs Theodoros Pangalos stated in 2002 that Turks have been being allowed "to drag their bloodstained boots across the carpet" in the European Union capitals and has labelled Turks as "bandits, murderers, and rapists".

Turks are the largest ethnic minority group in the Netherlands. The first recorded attack on Turks in the Netherlands were the Afrikaanderwijk riots. Although policies toward Turks in the Netherlands are more progressive than those in many other European countries, such as Germany, in a report on the Netherlands in 2008, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance wrote that the Turkish minority had been particularly affected by "stigmatization of and discrimination against members of minority groups". The report also noted that "the tone of Dutch political and public debate around integration and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities has experienced a dramatic deterioration". The network also noted "dramatic growth" of Islamophobia. In 2001, another international organization, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, highlighted a negative trend in Dutch attitudes towards minorities, compared with average European Union results. That analysis also noted that, compared to other Europeans, the Dutch were "more in favor of cultural assimilation of minorities" rather than "cultural enrichment by minority groups".

The Maltese have a colourful vocabulary stemming from their fight against the Ottoman Empire during the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. For example, the expression tgħammed tork is used when the sun is visible during rainfall; it means "a Turk has been baptised", which was considered a rare event. The phrase twieled tork ("a Turk was born") is also used. Another expression is ħaqq għat torok ("curse on the Turks"), used when something goes wrong.

According to a 2007 survey, 78% of Armenians see Turkey as a threat.

Georgians look with a wary eye to Turkey's growing Neo Ottomanism and the rise in popularity of irredentist maps showing Turkey with borders expanded into the former Ottoman Empire, usually including Adjara. Although some Turks have since come back to Meskheti (which is near the Turkish Georgian border), the Georgians and Armenians who settled in their homes have vowed to take up arms against any who return. Many Georgians have also argued that the Meskhetian Turks should be sent to Turkey, "where they belong".

According to Stanford University history professor Robert D. Crews, Russia has been historically more tolerant towards Turkic people than any other European administrations, and many Turkic people (Volga Tatars, Bashkirs, Karachays, Nogais, Kazakhs, Chuvash, for example), most of them Muslims, were fairly treated under Tsarist Russia. However, not all Turkic peoples received such generous treatment, for instance, Crimean Tatars under Russian Tsarist administration were forced to leave their houses for Turkey due to Russian colonial politics in the Crimean peninsula. In the Soviet Union, the NKVD and the Red Army carried out ethnic cleansing during World War II through mass deportations of Turks. In June 1945, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet minister of foreign affairs, formally demanded that Turkey surrender three provinces (Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin), and Moscow was also preparing to support Armenian claims to several other provinces. War against Turkey seemed possible, and Joseph Stalin wanted to drive out Turks (especially in Meskheti) who were likely to be hostile to Soviet intentions. The campaign is relatively poorly documented, but Soviet sources suggest that 115,000 Turks were deported, mainly to Central Asia. Most of them settled in Uzbekistan, but many others died along the way. More recently, some Turks in Russia, especially Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar, have faced human rights violations, including deprivation of citizenship and prohibitions on employment and owning property. Since 2004, many Turks have left the Krasnodar region for the United States as refugees. They are still barred from full repatriation to Georgia.

While Turkey and Uzbekistan have a fair relationship for being commonly Turkic, some tensions were witnessed. In 1989, 103 people died and more than 1,000 were wounded in ethnic clashes between Turks and Uzbeks. Some 700 houses were destroyed, and more than 90,000 Meskhetian Turks were driven out of Uzbekistan. Many Turks see these events as their "second deportation". Those who remained in Uzbekistan complained of ethnic discrimination.

After the Ottoman Empire fell in the early 20th century, many Turks fled as Muhacirs (refugees). Others intermarried or simply identified themselves as Yugoslavs or Albanians to avoid stigma and persecution. Historically, from the Ottoman conquest through the 19th century, many ethnically non Turkish groups—especially the Muslim Slavs of the Balkans—were referred to in local languages as Turks. This usage is common in literature, including in the works of Ivan Mažuranić and Petar II Petrović Njegoš. The religious ideology of Christoslavism, coined by Michael Sells, holds that "Slavs are Christian by nature and that any conversion from Christianity is a betrayal of the Slavic race". Under this ideology, as seen in Croatian and Serbian nationalism, South Slavic Muslims are not regarded as part of their ethnic kin; by virtue of their Muslim faith, they become "Turks".

When North Macedonia proclaimed its independence in 1991, the Macedonian state implemented nationalist politics, which aimed to assimilate Macedonian Muslims into a broader category of "Macedonians". The government banned education in Turkish in all regions to "prevent Turkification". This, however, was met with resistance by Muslims who did not support the association and wanted to learn Turkish and continue their education in Turkish. The protests failed, although one person applied to the European Court of Human Rights. The case revolved around rights to education in the mother tongue.

During the Great Eastern Crisis more than 10,000 Muslims, including Turks, were forced to left the territory of the Serbian Principality in 1862.

Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić's military chief and fellow convicted criminal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, described the conquest of Srebrenica and the ensuing massacre as an opportunity for "the Serbs to avenge themselves on the Turks". On July 11, 1995, the town of Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb Army. Its commander Ratko Mladić made his infamous statement at the same day, which has been used against him during International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, while he and his entourage posing for cameras with the town in the background:

Anti Turkism first appeared in the United States during World War I, when the Armenian genocide began and was reported by American newspapers. These reports had reinforced a sense of solidarity to Armenians and increasingly anti Turkish rhetorics in the United States, with the Turks being equally seen as a barbaric people.

As a result of the increasing Anti Zionist and antisemitic sentiment by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkish Israeli relations have been greatly damaged. However, Israelis have generally reserved criticism for only the Turkish government. In 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Yair Netanyahu, published a tweet remarking that Istanbul was once called Constantinople, a centre of Orthodox Christianity before "Turkish occupation" of the city, sparking a political crisis between Turkey and Israel. On 12 July 2020, a group of nine Israelis made up of Christians and Jews burned the Turkish flag at the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv in response to Erdoğan's decision to convert Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. They were later detained by Israeli police. After the Gaza flotilla raid in 2010, where 10 Turks were killed, and the subsequent diplomatic crisis between Israel and Turkey, the number of Israeli tourists to Turkey shrunk to 100,000 as Israelis preferred to "refrain from visiting the country that was seen to be hostile to them". By 2019, however, 500,000 Israelis visited Turkey, making it one of the most popular destinations for Israelis. On 10 February 2023, Israeli top rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu claimed that the earthquake that devastated Turkey was "a divine punishment" because the Turkish government had "defamed" Israel.

The guns and magazines used by Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings, were covered in white writing naming historical events, people, and motifs related to historical conflicts, wars, and battles between Muslims and European Christians, as well as the names of recent Islamic terrorist attack victims and the names of far right attackers. Notable references from Ottoman history included Skanderbeg (an Albanian nobleman who led an uprising against the Ottoman Empire), Antonio Bragadin (a Venetian officer who broke an agreement and killed Turkish captives), 1683 (which is the date of the Second Siege of Vienna), Miloš Obilić (who is said to have killed the Ottoman Emperor Murat I in Battle of Kosovo in 1389), János Hunyadi (who had blocked Ottoman attempts to take Belgrade), Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg (who defeated the Ottomans in 1683), the Battle of Kahlenberg (which marked the beginning of the Ottoman withdrawal from the Siege of Vienna) and "Turkofagos" (Turk eater), the nickname of Greek War of Independence revolutionary Nikitaras,) and 40 wounded. His 'manifesto' specifically refers to Turks and utters threats against Turkey, that Istanbul's mosques will be destroyed and Hagia Sophia will be Christianized. He was also playing an associated propaganda song in his car before the shooting.

The film has been accused of Islamophobia for the vilification of Mehmed II and for portraying the figure of Vlad the Impaler as a hero even though, according to Turkish journalist Elest Ali Korkmaz, he "indiscriminately killed Turks and Bulgarians" in real history.

Midnight Express is criticized for its unfavorable portrayal of Turkish people. In her 1991 book Turkish Reflections: A Biography of Place, Mary Lee Settle wrote: 'The Turks I saw in Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express were like cartoon caricatures, compared to the people I had known and lived among for three of the happiest years of my life.' Pauline Kael, in reviewing the film for The New Yorker, commented, 'This story could have happened in almost any country, but if Billy Hayes had planned to be arrested to get the maximum commercial benefit from it, where else could he get the advantages of a Turkish jail? Who wants to defend Turks? (They don't even constitute enough of a movie market for Columbia Pictures to be concerned about how they are represented.)' One reviewer, writing for World Film Directors, wrote: "Midnight Express is 'more violent, as a national hate film than anything I can remember', 'a cultural form that narrows horizons, confirming the audience's meanest fears and prejudices and resentments'." David Denby of New York criticized Midnight Express as 'merely anti Turkish, and hardly a defense of prisoners' rights or a protest against prison conditions'. Denby said also that all Turks in the movie — guardian or prisoner — were portrayed as 'losers' and 'swine', and that 'without exception [all the Turks] are presented as degenerate, stupid slobs'. Turkish Cypriot film director Derviş Zaim wrote a thesis at the University of Warwick on the representation of Turks in the film, in which he concluded that the one dimensional portrayal of the Turks as 'terrifying' and 'brutal' served merely to reinforce the sensational outcome, and was likely influenced by such factors as Orientalism and capitalism.

Greek actress Nia Vardalos, participated in a Saturday Night Live episode where Turks were portrayed as dirty, smoking, Arabic speaking, ragtag, nose picking and anti Armenian characters, which was heavily criticized by the Turkish Forum, a network of expat Turks which protested NBC and asked for a public apology, and the show received heavy criticism by the Turks on the internet.

: In old French, terms such as "C'est un vrai Turc" ("A true Turk") were used to refer to brutish and cruel individuals. : In contemporary Italian, phrases such as "bestemmia come un Turco" ("Cursing like a Turk") and "puzza come un Turco" ("Stinking like a Turk") are often used. The phrase "fumare come un turco" ("Smoking like a Turk) is used to indicate excessive consumption of tobacco. : Some offensive expressions are "Eruit zien als een Turk" ("to look like a Turk"), which means to "seem filthy", "repulsive", or "Rijden als een Turk" ("to drive like a Turk"), meaning "to drive recklessly". : In Norwegian is used the expression "Sint som en tyrker" which means "angry as a Turk". : In Romanian language it is common to call "a Turk" somebody who's stubborn, who is not able to understand. : Spanish people used to say "turco" when they wanted to insult another person.