“All I knew was that I was stuck”: George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell: An Age Like This, 1920–1940 (Boston: David R. Godine, 2000), 236.
7. AMERICAN DREAMS: AMERICA, IRAN, AND TURKEY
“the standard by which this nation’s commitment”: John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 425.
“Has the American dream been achieved”: James Baldwin, “The American Dream and the American Negro,” New York Times, March 7, 1965.
Dr. Shirley was a rabble-rouser: Suzy Hansen, “Hope in the Wreckage,” New York Times Magazine, July 2012.
“instill panic that the country was sliding towards a communist takeover”: Christopher de Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia (New York: Harper, 2012), 221.
“Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?”: Quoted in Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Root of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2008), xxv.
“undemocratic independent Iran”: Quoted in de Bellaigue, Patriot of Persia, 254.
“one of the great symbols of postwar liberal development”: David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 231.
“as time passed and the numbers grew”: Quoted in Michael Axworthy, Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 80.
“We found ourselves wondering”: Quoted in ibid., 81.
“Whoever fell into the grip of that organization”: Ryszard Kapu?ciński, Shah of Shahs (New York: Knopf, 2014), 46.
“The Iranian who has been harassed at work”: Ibid., 76.
“casualty to what was looked upon as medieval fanaticism and religiosity”: Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Vintage, 1997), ii.
“You understand that these are Americans”: Quoted in ibid., xv.
“connected in the popular mind with foolish spending”: Ibid., 30.
“A nation trampled by despotism”: Kapu?ciński, Shah of Shahs, 113.
But Istanbul’s era of regeneration and repair: Suzy Hansen, “Diary: Istanbul,” London Review of Books, May 2015.
“America tried to shape and orient the Turkish labor movement”: Ralph H. Salmi and Gonca Bayraktar Durgun, Turkish-U.S. Relations: Perspectives from Ankara (Boca Raton, FL: BrownWalker Press, 2005), 82.
EPILOGUE
What was more disturbing to me: Suzy Hansen, “Corruptions of Empire,” The Baffler no. 33, 2016.
“Empires rot from the inside”: Viet Thanh Nguyen, “The End of Empire,” New York Times, November 9, 2016.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the advice, love, and support of others. As a journalist and an American abroad, I have been privileged to meet so many incredible people—they invited me into their lives, gave me their time, and answered my endless questions. Their wisdom has been a gift. I am also indebted to hundreds of writers who informed this book.
A special thanks to the Institute of Current World Affairs, and particularly Steve Butler, for choosing me for the incomparably generous and thrilling ICWA fellowship, even though I couldn’t pronounce the word “Erdo?an.” It changed my life forever, and you will always have my gratitude.
Over the years, so many editors have nurtured my articles and much of this book into fruition: Chris Lehmann, Lidija Haas, Lindsey Gilbert, Hugo Lindgren, Sheelah Kolhatkar, Christian Lorentzen, Sarah Goldstein, Jonathan Shainin, Tom McGeveran, Josh Benson, Taylor Antrim, Rebecca Dana, Emily Biuso, Allen Freeman, Chloe Schama, and Rachel Morris. I am especially grateful to Dean Robinson, Bill Wasik, and Jake Silverstein, and to Cynthia Cotts and the heroic New York Times magazine fact-checking staff, who save us all from ourselves.
My agent, Amanda Urban, took a chance on an unformed idea and offered me guidance, friendship, and love—Binky, it is a privilege to know you. I am also lucky to have the best editor in the world, Eric Chinski, who seemed to know exactly what this book was, even before I did. He made every word of it better, and the last few years a total pleasure.
Thank you, too, to the wonderful people at FSG: Jonathan Galassi; Jeff Seroy and Sarita Varma; the very patient Laird Gallagher; Rob Sternitzky and Debra Helfand, for handling the manuscript with care; and Richard Oriolo, for his beautiful design. Thank you to Julie Tate for her eleventh-hour fact-checking.
My reporting abroad would not have been possible, period, without Caner, Arif Afzalzada, Iason Athanasiadis, Olga Alexopoulou, and Mandi Fahmy.
My brilliant and loving friends read this manuscript carefully and improved it immeasurably: Pankaj Mishra, Mary Mount, Jessica Alexander, Hillary Frey, Sarah Topol, Olga Alexopoulou, Alex Travelli, Jenna Krajeski, Asl?, Rana, Nichole Sobecki, Gloria Fisk, Caroline Finkel, Tobias Garnett, and Izzy Finkel, whose critique was so comprehensive, it practically came in book-length form. Dawn MacKeen, Sarah Goldstein, Catherine Steindler, Yasmine Seale, and Lidija Haas also went above and beyond. To Meg Sylvester, Sheelah Kolhatkar, Mark Lotto, Lydia Polgreen, Anna Louie Sussman, the New York Observer crew, Laura Miller, Stephanie Zacharek, Charley Taylor, Maria Russo, Amy Reiter, and my favorite Jersey girl, Meghan Johnson Womack—with whom I have been having a conversation for twenty-five years—I am forever grateful to you all.
My years in Turkey have been a dream only because of so many Istanbullular. The Ayd?nta?ba? family—Asl?, Defne, Figen, Mert, and Garo—welcomed me before I even arrived and embraced me with love. Asl?, thank you for teaching me everything about Turkish politics and for your unwavering friendship. I also learned immensely from Gül Tuysuz, ?zsel Beleli, Zehra Altayl?, Zeynel Gül, ?zge Kelek?i, Naciye ?itil, Fato? Minaz, the brilliant Kristin Fabbe, and countless others. For fun and friendship: Maddy and Ansel, Sabrina Tavernise, Nichole Sobecki, Kathryn Cook, Patrick Legant, Lynsey Addario, Jed Boyar and Gloria Fisk, Bicey and Izzy. Elif Batuman, Jenna Krajeski, and Sarah Topol have been the most loyal and entertaining of late-night companions, as has Olga, who taught me all things Greek. To Marc, my favorite debate partner, and to Sibel, for her shrewd analysis of all things. To Caner, who still answers my thousand questions. To Rana, who still makes Istanbul magical. And to the beautiful people of Turkey: thank you for sharing with me your wondrous country.
Jessica Alexander and Hillary Frey—your friendship, love, and humor have been the great comforts of my life. Thank you both for being there, every day, in that ever reassuring little corner on my computer screen. I love you.